20 Questions with Jessie Mindel
Pixel Journal: What’s the first thing you do every morning?
Jessie Mindel: I’ll either meditate or turn on music, usually “I Miss You” by Grey ft. Bahari. Or I might immediately have my usual breakfast of oatmeal with apples.
PJ: What is one thing on your bucket list?
JM: To start some sort of non-profit or a game-changing organization that helps people to more meaningfully communicate. I’d also love to travel, not for the sake of traveling or visiting any specific location, but so as to learn about the perspectives of remote cultures to which the Western world is seldom exposed. Building a wacky Rube Goldberg machine ought to be somewhere on there as well.
PJ: Beverage of choice?
JM: Water. Or hot cocoa for fun.
PJ: What did you want to be when you were a kid?
JM: In preschool, when everyone was jumping at the opportunity to be a Power Ranger or a princess, I couldn’t resist the urge to become a professional alligator. As time went by, I abandoned such frivolous dreams of interspecies transmogrification, and became increasingly interested in being an inventor, writer, and designer; those interests have been very much sustained to this day.
PJ: What could you eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
JM: In general terms, I would go for some sort of lean protein and cruciferous vegetable. Or Mediterranean food.
PJ: If you could have coffee with any person, living or dead, who would it be?
JM: First, I would find a way to manipulate the physical and temporal nature of coffee so that I could pour it into multiple mugs and distribute them across spacetime. Then, I could have multiple meetings. I would love to find myself spontaneously in a whole room of OHS teachers, or traveling into the past, I’d love to speak with Foucault, Turing, other philosophers, authors, and engineers that I can’t think of at the moment, my ancestors, and perhaps also the natives of New Zealand, Australia, and Southern Pacific islands, before their culture was utterly changed by the tyrannizing force of colonization. Kittens or puppies? Definitely puppies. Chewed up socks, playful barks and wags, and furry heads resting on your feet while you read for the win.
PJ: Imagine Dragons or Chainsmokers?
JM: Both are amazing! I do have a slight leaning towards the Chainsmokers—Imagine Dragons sometimes has a little too grungy of a sound for me.
PJ: What is one thing no one would ever guess about you?
JM: I don’t yet know how to ride a bicycle.
PJ: What is the last book you read for fun?
JM: I read through the whole “The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel” series, and absolutely loved its way of weaving together otherwise disparate mythologies with modern action and science.
PJ: What’s the most-played song on your playlist right now?
JM: “Electric Glow” by Tritonal, “Find Me” by Sigma, or “Candles” by Morgan Page.
PJ: Favorite movie?
JM: I’m not super into TV or film, but I tend to enjoy sci-fi, action, and adventure movies with just the right pinch of comedy and romance. I really enjoyed Interstellar, and also like many of the Disney movies.
PJ: Who’s your favorite OHS teacher?
JM: It’s hard to choose just one! I’ve loved all of my teachers and found their classes enrapturing, but Dr. Hays has been my favorite thus far. Ninja cats for the win!
PJ: What’s your favorite emoji?
JM: :D or :P —I like the old-school emojis. Semiotically speaking, they’re both more interesting and more relatable.
PJ: What’s your biggest dream?
JM: My biggest dream is to found an organization or startup that uses engineering, design, psychology, and storytelling to help individuals find meaning in daily interactions and plunge into the great depths of their passions. With that comes also the desire to find happiness, in whatever shape it may manifest itself, and help others do the same.
PJ: If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?
JM: The way we interact. I’m curious to see what human interaction would look like without either the layer of superficiality that we often employ to keep the day-to- day moving along, the use of language itself, the use of
symbols, or the use of bias. The world itself could likely never be changed in that capacity or to that extent, but it would be fascinating to see what human nature is like in the absence of communication and prejudice. More realistically, it would be valuable to remove some of the walls which bias, miscommunication, and superficiality quickly establishing in a rapid-moving society.
PJ: What’s your favorite OHS class?
JM: That’s also a tough one! So far, APELC is my favorite class, but I also really enjoyed DFRL, Honors Chemistry, and Designing Your Life. This year, I’ve found University-Level Literature, CRA, Study of the Mind, and Multivariable Calculus to all be fascinating as well.
PJ: Graduation Weekend or Summer @ Stanford?
JM: S@S. More time means more fun, and a greater opportunity to really get to know your friends and make new ones offscreen.
PJ: What do you want to do after high school?
JM: I’m excited to explore what college has in store! I’d love to find a passionate community (much like that of the OHS) where I can explore my interests and dive deeper into my hobbies and academic aspirations. I’m also interested in potentially taking a gap year and finding a computer science or design internship, spending part of my time working on creative projects and exploring the coffee shop ambiance that design thinkers seem to find so inspiring in the empathy and prototyping stages of their projects.
PJ: What’s one piece of advice for OHSers?
JM: Love what you do. Don’t let go of the things that give you purpose, nor neglect the exploration of new activities—they are to the sense of self and the creative mind what oxygen is to the heart.