The Gift That Keeps on Giving: A Simple Guide to Self-Improvement in High School

by Malavika Eby, Leena Atul Khanzode (Foreword)

High school is a mess and sometimes it feels like it’s designed to make us into a mess too. We’re juggling so much at a time — AP classes, dysfunctional sleep schedules, complicated social lives, college applications, multiple extracurriculars — that our health and wellbeing are often what end up taking the backseat. I’m a first-semester senior at a competitive public high school in the Bay Area, and though I could barely say the same for my first year and a half here, this past year, I spent my time meaningfully, got seven hours of sleep each night, earned all As, found supportive friends and went to sleep happy. That growth is what inspired this passion project — a guidebook on how I learned to thrive as a high-schooler. It isn’t as hard as it turns out, positive change begets positive change, which begets even more positive change. Using my own experiences as a framework for how you can improve your wellbeing, I wrote fourteen chapters, each about different steps of self-growth. I also conducted interviews with four different local high-school senior Bhagya Narayanan, UC Berkeley sophomore Vivek Kamarshi, Child, Adolescent and Adult psychiatrist Dr. Leena Khanzode, and self-compassion pioneer, researcher, and UNC Chapel Hill Assistant Professor Dr. Karen Bluth. I’m excited for every single one of you to realize that wellness and success aren’t mutually exclusive.

206 pages, Paperback

Published October 20, 2020