When Kayla was in elementary school, she choked on a pretzel, resulting in a near-death experience. Ever since, Kayla has lived with a carpe diem attitude, trying to seize every moment and live her life to the fullest. She has participated in many extracurriculars to broaden her horizons, but feels like the most important thing she learned from her experience was to try things you may be too scared to pursue. 

“There was one day when I was at home over summer, and I was watching a cartoon with my brother. We were eating sourdough pretzels, and I had the smart idea of putting Gatorade in spray bottles, so I gave my brother the large spray bottle and took the small squirt bottle, and I ended up choking on a pretzel. We were in late elementary, so my brother and I didn’t know what the Heimlich was. I tried to squirt the Gatorade into my mouth, but it wasn’t coming out fast enough, so I unscrewed the top, but there was only a little Gatorade left. I tried to splash it into my mouth, but that wasn’t working; my brother gave me his bottle, but there wasn’t much Gatorade left in there either. I couldn’t really focus on anything, except focusing on trying to breathe, so my brother had to run to the kitchen to get water, and I didn’t die. I learned that you never know when life is gonna end; you don’t know when you’re gonna die, and you don’t know if you’ll ever have the opportunity to do something or get better at something. This led me to adopt an inspirational quote from Shrek: ‘you’ll never shine if you don’t glow.’ If you want to succeed in something, you have to first start; even if you’re not the best, you have to start. You have to do something, and then you can eventually glow and be better at it. Maybe you won’t be the best, but you can always try. This is what led me to pursue art; at first I was mediocre, but now people contact me for projects and to design things like tattoos. Just seize the moment, because you don’t know when life will end.”