Polly Ning
Polly Ning (she/her) is a grade 11 student who joined ShadAnywhere from Hong Kong in China. She wanted to attend ShadAnywhere so that she could connect with industry experts in STEAM to learn more about potential career paths, while still being able to visit with her family back home. Polly shares what her ShadAnywhere experience looked like from across the world!
3:00pm HKT
Since I wake up in the afternoon, I have time to work on my university applications and spend time with my family and friends. I’m a rising G12 student applying to American universities, which I’ve dedicated a lot of time to working on this summer. Also, as a boarding student in Canada but with my home in Hong Kong, I like to dedicate time when I am back home to spending time with my family and old friends, prompting me to join ShadAnywhere.
11:00pm HKT
I sign into ShadAnywhere’s opening session. I’m usually greeted with upbeat music, and I am excited to start my day at Shad. The music instantly boosts my mood and gets me ready for another exciting day at Shad!
12:00am HKT
We are listening to a Shad lecture or doing a hands-on activity. We had a large variety of these sessions, ranging from learning to learn online to coding on a TI-Innovator Hub! My personal favorite guest from all the sessions was Kenton Low, who taught us about storytelling. I loved his session, as it was informative, as well as captivating.
2:00am HKT
After a break, we get to our design session. My design team was focused on providing better quality of life for people in rural communities. We had two ideas for our project, proposing for a train to be built that connected rural and urban communities, and implementing a policy to give businesses incentives to open in rural communities. Our team ended up with the policy idea, and we worked hard to eventually present it. I enjoyed design team sessions a lot as my team was full of creative and intelligent people that I got to know.
3:00Am HKT
We have an hour-long break. However, because it is so late at night, I spend my breaks either talking to my friends in Canada or watching a TV show. Other Shads are encouraged to go outside, whether it is to take a walk or just to enjoy the outdoors.
4:00am HKT
The last hour of Shad is spent participating in some community activity, whether it is a connect session we can choose, a spark session we can choose, or community time in general. This also includes building challenges, such as building a paper ball run, a dream wallet, or a tower of popsicle sticks! My favorite activity was the Postsecondary meets, where we had a few sessions of 10 minutes each to hop onto a breakout room and ask a facilitator about their postsecondary education. This session helped me gain insight into different schools and majors, as well as lessen the stress and unknowns about postsecondary.
5:00am HKT
After the closing session, which usually details a schedule for the next day, I go to sleep. I’m extremely tired at this point from staying up all night, and so I catch up on some much-needed sleep so that I can wake up the next day ready for another day of Shad.
