Waylon Lu, Class of 2015, Century Park Campus

I am from the United States, and I started attending YCIS in Year 2. Since I started at YCIS in Primary, I have truly experienced most of my education at YCIS, and I feel that I have grown up during my time at the school. My greatest achievement was completing the IB programme. IB was definitely a challenging programme and I’m proud of myself for what I accomplished.

This past year, I joined the Robotics Club with some of my IB classmates, as well as a few younger students, too. Out of all of the co-curricular activities that I participated in at YCIS, robotics was my favourite. We actually had to design and physically build a small robot in the club to prepare for a competition. This involved not only an understanding of software engineering, but also a lot of teamwork. In the end, we were really proud of our work and we placed in the Shanghai Regional Competition, which was a huge accomplishment. Another co-curricular I participated in was the Broadcast Club in Year 12 and 13. With my IB classmates, we worked together as a team and did a bi-weekly broadcast. The broadcasts were very interesting to work on and we had fun making them creative.

Since Year 2 through Year 13 I met so many people, including fellow students and my teachers, from all over the world and with many different cultural backgrounds. When you actually interact with someone at YCIS, it’s almost like you are interacting with the culture that’s behind them. It’s very fascinating to learn about a culture that’s different from your own. It teaches you how to think globally, and these experiences have helped define me today.

Soon, I will move to Canada and attend the University of Toronto to study chemistry. When I move to college, I’m actually saying goodbye to my friends and the YCIS school community, both of which I will dearly miss.