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Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy

I successfully made my way to Harvard

Nicole    2022-03-09
 

My name is Nicole, and I am from San Jose, California. I am currently 18, and I have been practicing qigong at Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy for 11 years. Last week, I was accepted to Harvard, so hopefully that’s where I will be going for the next four years.

Something that I have learned from Tai Ji Men is to be grateful. I know shifu has said the word gratitude a lot, and I have heard that just by being around here. Every time I come to Tai Ji Men, we see brothers and sisters caring for each other and asking how their day was, and I think that really stems from both a sense of gratefulness for each other and the environment we live in.

I have seen that a lot here, and that’s been amplified for me outside the Tai Ji Men community as well. Even with school, the little things such as being grateful for my friends and my teachers have been really helpful for me because they have always been an integral part of my life and my process in getting into Harvard. Other than that, I’ve also grown to be grateful for the environment that I live in. Being grateful has taught me how there are a lot of cracks and problems outside of our Silicon Valley bubble. This sense of community service has really grown from this gratefulness I have learned from Tai Ji Men.

As I said earlier, I have been in Tai Ji Men for 11 years, and I think something else that’s been really important to me is learning how to meditate. Being a high school student in the Bay Area isn’t always easy. Every day we have a lot of homework and clubs; I am in journalism, always writing articles, meeting deadlines, and getting yelled at by multiple different people at once. I found that being able to just sit down and meditate is just really a way for me to let go, and I am really glad that I was able to learn that here.

I am so excited to go to Harvard for the next four years. I know there are still a lot of challenges for me to face and a lot of things I can improve but I am really excited to start university.