Jessica Lu, Social Media Director
Hello friend! After all of the writing, editing, filming, and so on in this class, I still have yet to figure out what to say about myself. But I guess I will start with my name and grade. I cannot mess that up, right? My name is Jessica Lu, and I’m a senior at this wonderful school. For the past two years, I have been a staff writer, and this year I am the Social Media Director. As part of my job, I run The Leaf’s Twitter and Instagram. (Insert shameless plug to follow both of our accounts.) In the quick-paced and ever-changing place known as the Internet, I love capitalizing on new trends and experimenting with different approaches to bolster our online presence. Last year, I’ve become fascinating with video-making. While written word offers its own unique way to tell someone’s story, adding visual and audio components make a story more compelling and more real. Hopefully, you will be seeing more videos from me this year! Outside of journalism, I am the co-event lead of the Relay For Life in the Montgomery Area. I have been involved with Relay since I was a freshman, and it’s been the most incredible experience. I hope that by getting our students and neighboring schools involved, we can raise money that can fund more research and patient-care services. I also tutor at Operation Give Back. The kids are so sweet, and they never fail to make me laugh. Just recently, one of the fifth graders told me she would never need to learn how to do mental math because her future self was obviously rich. And I competitively swim year-round. Practice is extremely challenging (especially when you have exercise-induced-asthma), but if you join swim team, you will meet the most amazing and determined people. Swimming is always mistaken for an individual sport when the team spirit is the best out of any other sport I have played before. (Not to mention my entire swim lane has formed an asthma camaraderie.) And despite my teasing of my friend with vegan memes, I am the vice president of her club Colorful Eats. Colorful Eats is a vegan and allergy-friendly cooking club. While my friend likes to joke that all she eats is ice, the club has really opened my eyes to how many delicious vegan options there are that you can easily make. If you want to know some random facts about me: I love making people laugh. Taro bubble tea is my favorite drink. I believe memes are crucial to building friendships. I definitely think it’s possible that aliens are real. I always sing in the shower. And I love trying new food. So let me end with a part of my bio from last year: Are you ready to get funky? Because I am!