When La Reina shut down, senior Nareen Chouljian’s world changed.

“I wasn’t expecting to come to a co-ed public school for my senior year,” she said. “As corny as it sounds, I’m really just a teenage girl trying to figure out my life right now.”

Part of figuring things out was making lifetime memories over the summer with her friends from her old school. Her choir group travelled around Italy, performing at the Vatican, Rome, Florence and Venice.

“We were all still together just trying to enjoy our last little bit of time together,” Chouljian recalled.

Her family came with her on the trip around Italy, so she learned more about her own family history as well. Chouljian spends time with her parents, brother and grandfather, helping out on their avocado ranch. They live in a house designed by her grandfather and spend their time maintaining the ranch together. Spending time on this work brings them closer together.

“We just kind of talk about our lives because we’re scattered all over the place,” Chouljian explained. “I’m at school, my brother is in college, my parents work.”

Part of the work around the ranch includes fostering cats and finding them permanent homes. Chouljian identifies strongly as a cat person and sees herself having her own cats when she’s older.

“I definitely see myself living in the city with at least two cats,” she said. “I do tend to name my cats after movie characters because I am a huge movie person.”

Chouljian’s taste in movies reflects the current period of life that she is in: coming of age. 

“They speak so well to the teenage experience,” she said. “It’s funny: my favorite movies are the ones I can watch the least because they’re just so good that I just can’t, like ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower.’”

And of course, Chouljian is also a fan of classic emotional movies like “La La Land.”

“The ending was so upsetting that I can’t watch it that often,” she smiled. “Movies that make me feel are definitely my favorite.”

Chouljian lets herself be guided by that same emotion, something that she considers to be a core part of who she is.

“I’m just someone who tries to lead with my heart and put a lot of empathy and kindness into everything that I do,” she said.

Chouljian’s kindness has helped her in the chaotic transitions between schools, forging friendships while still maintaining the old ones. 

“La Reina was a very tight community so my friends and I definitely still keep in touch,” she said. “We try to meet up once a week.”

Her friends from La Reina are the ones she laughs with in one of her favorite photos, at their last school dance before the school closed.

“We were trying to take a cute photo together and so we just had it on video so we could take it and screenshot,” Chouljian explains, recalling the memory fondly with a smile. “Our friend, as we were posing, just said, ‘Ok now everyone just laugh.’ We were so caught by surprise that we all just burst into laughter. It was great because we could just get a little moment of joy after the really stressful year we’d had.”

Since then, Chouljian has made more memories at the Oak Park school dance.

“I’m not a huge dance person but it was nice to go and kind of get the kind of typical high school experience because our dances at my old school weren’t very normal,” Chouljian said. “They were very small and all-girls, so it was nice to hang out with my friends at the Homecoming dance and live it up as much as we could. We went to In-N-Out after, it was great.”

However, the dance was the second most memorable experience from this school year. The first most memorable moment? 

“The relief of finishing our stats project,” Chouljian laughs.

Chouljian works hard at all of her subjects, but she particularly likes her advanced computer graphics class with Mr. Peluce.

“I’m thinking about going into graphic design in college, so that’s been a lot of fun and it’s gotten me kind of excited about going into that when I go to college,” she said. 

Chouljian hopes to live on the East Coast, particularly in New York or Boston. One of the perks for her is that everything is within walking distance, but the other is the weather.

“I have reverse seasonal depression: I love it when it gets chillier and rains,” she joked.

But Chouljian knows that rain or shine, she can get through anything with one simple motto.

“What’s meant to happen will happen. Life has thrown a lot of things at me and a lot of the time I just get very frustrated. But I’d say I kind of just need to learn to accept that things happen for a reason,” she said.

This mentality comes from all the ups and downs that Chouljian conquered this year.

“I’m proud of myself for how I’ve handled this transition. It’s not a very normal experience to have your school closed right before your senior year,” she said. “I was very settled into my old school, so I wasn’t expecting to have to uproot everything and come to a place that was super foreign. I’m proud of myself for how much I’ve grown in the past six months and how much I’ve learned just from being here.”

Going forward with resilience and passion for her goals, Chouljian hopes that she can spread kindness.

“I’ve worked my whole life to be a good person. That sounds really simple, but I have only ever wanted to show people kindness. I feel like we get very caught up in the fact that we’re going after these high GPAs and what looks good on our resume. But I feel like if we started looking at how we treat other people the world would be a little bit better. I just kind of want people to remember that I am someone who leads with an open heart and just always strives for good.”