I faced a lot of challenges this summer. First, I go to a year-round school, so I still had my EOGs and an EOC exam in June. However, in that time period, my grandmother passed away, and we had to rush to India right after. I lived in my father’s village for eight days while we were a part of the rituals that were still remaining. There were lots of people and there was no WiFi, so I couldn’t do much at that time. Also, I initially signed up with two other girls (before we had to go to India). One of them was going to go to India as well, but her plans got temporarily delayed, so she signed up with us. We agreed that the other girl and I would work on the project and when she returned, she would join us. She was also going to make the presentation since she was not really here for most of the summer. However, when I left for India, the one staying here dropped out, saying she didn’t want to do it by herself. The other girl and I agreed that we would continue, but at the end of July when I came back to America, she also said that she was dropping out. I returned with 17 days left to complete a summer’s worth of work and school starting the same week.

Even though the summer is over, my project is not. This summer I learned that the awareness in India is close to zero. I want to help fix that by presenting to some schools in India (I have already contacted some). Another issue that I saw in the US, was that teens think it’s ok and even funny to make fun of neurodivergent people. For example, there’s a running joke of calling someone “acoustic” which is just another word for autistic. I want to fight against these kinds of phrases by presenting in schools, which is where most of the jokes occur. I will try to present it in as many groups as possible in the US and in India, though the level of awareness needed to be spread in both these places are totally different.