After high school, students leave everything they know and jump into the unknown: college. They leave the halls that they have walked hundreds of times. They leave the friends that they have known since kindergarden. They blindly jump into college life, which can be terrifying, but not for everyone. People who have positive attitudes look for the good in every situation and are always excited to meet new people will thrive when first leaping into their future. It takes someone like senior, Isha Shah.

Shah has an incredibly positive outlook considering how involved and busy she is in and out of school. She is involved in choir, fashion, where she designs and makes clothing as well as helping others do it, and latin club, where she prepares for exams but also can enjoy being a nerd with her friends. In addition, she takes classes at MONTCO which eat up her schedule during the school day. She decided to get involved in these activities as a result of her loves of the arts and of helping others.

“I love helping people, because I love seeing the smile on their face, and when they smile it makes me smile and all happy inside, and I like feeling happy inside. Who doesn’t?” explained Shah.

Shah’s secret to a positive attitude is finding something that one loves and using that as an outlet. For Shah, that outlet is the arts, which explains why she is so involved in artistic activities. She has always found comfort in the arts and focuses on them to stay positive since she enjoys them so much.

She believes there is good in everyone and everything. Even the worst situations have a positive side or something positive to learn. She believes that negatives way one down so, why even pay attention to them?

“I had a rough time junior year and that really changed me. I thought ‘Why would I look at this in such a negative way if it’s just going to kill me inside?’ So I look at positive things now and it makes me feel so much better,” told Shah.

For Shah, staying positive also comes from people in one’s life. Shah is the type of person who tries to be friends with everybody in order to help others see her in as positive a way as she sees herself. Being positive towards others makes someone more positive themselves. Shah finds it important to be a friend to everyone since it makes them feel more positive like she does and also she believes it is important since more friends could lead to more opportunities in the future.

“Making friends just comes naturally to me. My mom is really outgoing, and I feel like i get it from her. She looks for connections everywhere which have helped her so much in life. Why wouldn’t I want this for my future?” explained Shah “I never know where the people I know now will end up in life and I want to be sure that I’m always on someone’s good side because it is always important to know people.”

After high school, she plans on attending Albright College to study Biochemistry. Even though it is a smaller college with less people, she picked it since she loved the feeling of community. After attending an open house and meeting students there, she fell in love with the feeling of family and the excitement of the students about college and decided that she wanted to be as excited about college as they were. She believes that this is a place where she will thrive and is pumped to learn and make new friends.