Some students struggle with making friends and trying out for sports teams at their new school, while others prefer staying inside their room after school rather than going outside and socializing with friends.

But not grade 7 student Zeynep A.

Zeynep’s an outgoing girl who recently shared her love for sports and her future life—which she already seems to have planned out—with The Bite.

What follows is Zeynep’s story, in her own words:

I moved to AISB at the beginning of 2019, in kindergarten, for my dad’s job. Because of that reason, it was challenging to adapt to a new culture and country. I think the hardest part was leaving my friends behind because I also didn’t know very good English, which made it hard for me to communicate with people very well. It was not very easy to make friends, as my English was not very good, and people back then were not very inclusive.

When I encounter difficult subjects or, like, topics, that are not easy for me, [I first research] a bit about them and then learn more. Starting with small steps, going from small steps to, like, covering larger parts of the topic. First, I would start with a little question, based on what the topic is, and I would build on that question until I eventually understand the whole topic itself.

My brain honestly does not function when things are messy around. I always like to create a schedule, since we have our school schedule, I always create a schedule for myself on Docs, and I print it to see how I’m gonna manage my time every day. For example, on Monday, I have no CCAs. So, I come home, I do my homework, I finish it, and then I go out with my friends for a bit. I come back home, read, for example, then maybe call my friends, and then I go to sleep. I like to repeat this every day, but for example, for this season, on Tuesdays and on Thursdays, when I have football, I like to rest a bit after I get home, and if I don’t have any homework, I just go and hang out with my friends.

I am a very talkative person. I think, even though we learned about values and qualities in every grade, I’m learning a lot more about how to socialize with people while understanding them and your own priorities. And understanding other people’s priorities and their important things, like qualities in a friendship, is very important because then you can agree on things, instead of fighting or arguing with them, [this] is a very important quality in a friendship.

Participating in sports influenced my personal development by learning how to collaborate with people. In football, since you have to talk and communicate with everyone, you need to know where the ball is going, so you can pass to people. In football, if you try to only work individually, that’s not going to go very well, and eventually people are going to team up on you from the other team. So football really taught me to communicate with people and talk with them, and also, it really helped me with non-verbal communication. [For example] we learned how to use football hand signals to show where we’re going, what we’re going to do next, where we’re headed, if we want to score, pass, dribble—those things really help with teamwork skills. But then my personal development really helped me with my breathing. Let’s say, for example, after I didn’t play football for a while, I realised getting back on the field, I wasn’t very much able to control it with the stamina. But after playing for a while, I learned how to control my stamina and properly breathe, so I don’t run out of breath, and it really helped me with being fit.