Question: What is your name and school year?

Answer: My name is Cynthia Nguyen and I am currently a senior.

Q: If you could live anywhere, where would you live?

A: I’ve always dreamed of living in a more urban area where walking and public transportation is prioritized. As a kid, I wanted to live in NYC, but now I’d probably prefer somewhere like Portland, Seattle, or just anywhere with cold weather.

Q: What’s the worst food you’ve ever tried?

A: My dad loves to try new foods all the time, so he went to the grocery store and picked up different kinds of vinegars to try to cook with: apple cider vinegar, raspberry vinegar, and peach vinegar. However, this just happened to be during his smoothie phase, where he would buy fruits and make smoothies for us nearly every day. Somehow, he got it in his head that it would be a good idea to put these fruit-flavored vinegars into the smoothie. It was not a good idea. It ended up being overpowered with the taste of the vinegar and no one else would drink it, so he finished the whole thing himself.

Q: Do you have any siblings?

A: I have two siblings, a sister that’s a little over a year older than me, and a brother that’s 12 years younger than me.

Q: What is your favorite family vacation?

A: Since I was a kid, me and my family went to Vietnam every other year to visit my mom’s family. When the pandemic hit, not being able to travel to see them felt like the biggest loss. I missed hanging out with my cousins in the streets of Saigon, taking road trips to the beach in a car packed full of people, riding horses out in the countryside; there were just so many things I missed experiencing. Just this summer we went back to Vietnam for the first time in four years, and even in that short span of time there’s so much that’s changed from when I last visited.

Q: What is your childhood proudest accomplishment?

A: In middle school we had this thing called ‘Academic Plus’ which was basically just a competition between the middle schools on different subjects. I participated in the Listening category both years, where we would have a teacher read out a passage and take notes, and then take a test based only on the notes that we took. Every category had multiple students from each school competing, so winning first place both times I competed made me feel so accomplished.

Q: If you could choose to do anything for a day, what would it be?

A: This is probably a pretty boring answer but if I could do anything I would sleep in all day. I always find it hard to sleep as long as I want to, whether it’s because of school or even on the weekends when my whole family is at home and making noise in the mornings, so it would be nice to sleep and wake up out of my own will for once.

Q: Would you rather ride a bike, ride a horse, or drive a car?

A: Well, I don’t know how to ride a bike so definitely not that, and riding a horse doesn’t exactly result in a smooth trip. I would much rather prefer being inside a car where I can have A/C and my music playing.

Q: How many pillows do you sleep with?

A: Honestly, it depends on the day. It’s usually around four or five; I run pretty hot at night and the pillows are a lot cooler then I am so I try to cycle between different pillows around me so I’m not overheating.

Q: Who was your first celebrity crush, and are you still into them?

A: Me and my sister was obsessed with Michael Jackson as kids. My parents had a DVD with a collection of his music videos and we would ask them to play it all the time. She and I would argue about out favorite songs ( hers was Earth Song, mine was They Don’t Care About Us) and whose was better. I definitely last interest in his music as I got older, but its always a nice blast of nostalgia whenever I hear one of his songs.