On Tuesday, October 4, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Diya in the front parlor of Founders’ Hall. The interview took place on short notice due to scheduling conundrums — by which I mean Diya was given just 15-minutes to prepare. My papers and pens lay strewn across the coffee table, mingled with various microphone cables. With Mr. Tijerina’s jubilant assistance, podcasting equipment was rapidly cobbled together, leaving your humble interviewer rather exasperated. To say the very least, I wasn’t the picture of ease. 

I share this background for the sake of demonstrating a telling contrast. Just on time, with an air of calm, collected composure, in walked Diya. She took the chair opposite me, whipped out a resumé, and, well, gave one of the most polished, thoughtful, and sincere interview performances I’ve yet witnessed. I would say her ease, her tact was surprising. For most students our age, such would be the case. When one speaks of Diya, though, “expectation” is a term perpetually preceded by “exceeded.” 

This is Diya’s first year at Keystone — a rare claim for a senior. Coming to a new school in the twelfth grade is no easy feat, and the challenges of acclimating are only compounded by Keystone’s peculiar culture. What’s more, Diya arrived in San Antonio from Singapore—quite the distance to travel. In our conversation, she had this to say of the transition: “Singapore and San Antonio are very different in terms of the city and in terms of how people behave. And it has been very interesting to . . . notice cultural differences in terms of how you’re treated in a mall or how . . . there is so much focus on service over here.”

In typical Diya fashion, though, she makes adapting to a new city, country, and school sound facile — like a common exercise. “I’ve had a lot of tough experiences academically because I’ve moved around a lot,” she shared. “I’ve studied in India. I’ve also studied in Muscat in my formative years. It’s in the Middle East. All the moving around, academically, has been challenging, but I always knew that [I] had to stay ahead of the game. And that’s what I did by . . . working hard and making sure that [I] get all [my] doubts cleared with help from teachers.”

Evidently, she holds herself to a high standard of academic excellence. Rather Keystonian in character, Diya strives to challenge herself in the classroom. She’s not the sort who shies away from difficult tasks — and approaches personal and intellectual growth with an open mind. Though she bucks the title “student of the sciences,” Diya pursues the field with a rare passion and vision. “I really enjoy Mr. Nydegger’s physics class, [AP Physics: Electricity and Magnetism]. It has been amazing. I did have a very brief understanding of this concept from my previous school, but it was very brief and many times wrong. So having to challenge the wrong understanding that I had, being comfortable with being wrong, is something that I learned after coming to Keystone.”

Diya, you see, is the sort of student whose academic motivation, competitiveness, and success never outshine a caring spirit — and a mind keenly trained on global citizenship. You may be wondering, “What does Diya do in her spare time?” To this one should respond, “What doesn’t she do?” Immediately upon joining the Keystone community, Diya took to internationally-conscious volunteerism — focused on addressing the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. “Outside of school, when I think of work, I really think about volunteering,” she shared.

Through her one-on-one work with Ukrainian students whose education has been disrupted and her commendable efforts to bring similar volunteer opportunities to the Keystone community at-large, Diya has taken an active role in remedying active injustice at a time when global struggles can grow overwhelming. “Many times, we are fed with a lot of information from social media . . . I felt numb because [I’d]  not been able to do anything about it.” For many of us in the digital age, this is a relatable sentiment. Though, she didn’t stop there. Diya wasn’t willing to watch students suffer academically — not when she could make a real impact by deploying her skills of communication and passion for knowledge.

“That’s what really motivated me to go ahead and start tutoring . . . when I came across this organization called ENGin, which is a nonprofit organization . . . based in the U.S., I immediately signed up for it,” Diya explained. “ENGin works with Ukrainian schools and Ukrainian students to connect volunteer educators in the US and in the world.” Through weekly hour-long classes via Zoom, Diya has worked tirelessly to compensate for their lost classroom time.

Once more, Diya pushed herself. Working with Mr. Spedding to broadcast ENGin’s educational initiative and coordinate with potential volunteer tutors from the student body, she has excellently meshed Keystone’s core philosophies of service, empathy, and academic virtue with the current humanitarian climate. When she went to gauge interest, she found that the community came through in great numbers. “Following that, we connected those students with the organization, gave them the resources to sign up as volunteers. And they’re all in the process as we speak,” Diya said.

When she isn’t making the world a better place, Diya’s still remarkably productive. She makes scrolling through Instagram, somehow, sound rather impressive: “I’m not afraid to admit it. I scroll through Instagram, sometimes endlessly. But I’d like to say that I follow a lot of educational Instagram pages . . . world news and critical news and critique articles. So that’s how I’ve been able to not feel that bad about my unproductive habits.”

How could a student sound any more impressive? Well, you haven’t yet heard Diya’s plans for the future. Though she’s certain to pursue engineering at university and plans on earning her master’s degree, “if research interests me, I would do a Ph.D. as well,” Diya shared. Thereafter, she outlined an inspiring plan to merge ethical mission with technological ingenuity — a very Diya move. After college, she plans on launching a start-up with a dual objective: “one is . . . focusing on making clean energy more accessible to developing countries. And the second one is, internally, for the organization having [an] equal distribution of gender.”

And thus proceeded my conversation with Diya. Her cool temperament, her indomitable willingness to face challenges and change with gusto can serve as a model for all of us at Keystone. Whether we’re just beginning our high school journey, or on our way in search of new horizons, (or both in the case of Diya), we can all use a dash of that go-getter spirit. Keep tabs on Diya, readers, because she’s sure to change the world.

And thus proceeded my conversation with Diya. Her cool temperament, her indomitable willingness to face challenges and change with gusto can serve as a model for all of us at Keystone. Whether we’re just beginning our high school journey, or on our way in search of new horizons, (or both in the case of Diya), we can all use a dash of that go-getter spirit. Keep tabs on Diya, readers, because she’s sure to change the world.

Listen to Keynote’s full conversation with Diya on the “Cobra Radio” podcast and read the transcript of the interview here.