Senior year is a time, for most people, to move out of their comfort zones because they know it’s their last chance. They try everything they were too timid to in the past and get involved in as many school-related events as possible. Senior Selena Feng is among those students; she explored her different interests throughout the year and solidified her future in the process.

Before her senior year even started, Selena started gaining experience in the medical field for the future. Selena is planning on being a Physician’s Assistant(PA) and shadowed different nurses over the summer to learn, practice, and ask questions. She went downtown to Mercy West and learned valuable lessons about her future field.

“[Shadowing] was really cool,” Selena said. “Every day I was there was really different because there were a lot of different patients. I got to see a lot of different things and ask the people I shadowed a lot of different questions about how they got to where they are.”

Although Selena’s long-term goal is to be a PA, she must first become a Certified Nursing Assistant. Selena spends a total of five hours every week shadowing different nurses to learn first hand what it’s like to be in that profession. Along with learning different medical terminology, Selena has also learned how to interact with a wide range of patients.

“[Shadowing has] taught me that a lot of healthcare is communication and interacting with patients and your fellow nurses,” Selena said. “There is a lot to learn when it comes to healthcare, like all of the different medicines, diagnosis and [information] you need to know.”

Although most of Selena’s senior year has been spent focusing on her future medical profession, she has been taking her photography passion to the next level in yearbook class. She likes to incorporate an easier class into her heavy schedule each year, and yearbook sounded like a new, fun experience.

Because Selena takes pictures of the world around her every summer, she was already familiar with the camera. But, she did have to learn how to take pictures at different sporting events and caption them appropriately. With a new style of photography and a way to express herself creatively, yearbook has been a class that has both challenged and excited her.

“The first couple of weeks we were learning how to write captions and add pictures to our pages,” Selena said. “It took a little bit of time to learn, but after that, it was really simple and fun. You really get to express your own creativity through your designs and your captions. I usually like to take pictures of my own in the summer, but this year, I [learned] how to take a lot of pictures of different sporting events at school.”

After learning the basics, Selena was assigned a couple of pages to create for the final product released at the end of the year. She took pictures of multiple sporting events, created captions, interviewed, and put her creative energy into actually making the page.

Selena and the rest of the staff adjusted well to their new teacher, Holly Wierenga, and managed to get all of their work done while having fun. Selena described the room as a fun, relaxing, supportive atmosphere filled with a caring staff that loves Wierenga.

“Everyone is really supportive of one another; we just have a lot of fun,” Selena said. “Mrs. Wieringa is a really good teacher; we all love her. We have a lot of fun in class; I’m going to miss them every day.”

Selena breathed a huge sigh of relief when the yearbook was complete after months of hard work. She believes that everyone adjusted to the sudden teacher shift and worked really well as a team, and is proud of the final product.

“We just finished, [and] it feels good,” Selena said. “I think we, as a class, [adjusted] really well because we got the book done in time and all the pictures and pages are complete. We just worked really well as a team. I’m glad we got to make something that people will look back on years to come. When I look at this book, not only will I see what we put on the page, [but] I’m sure I’ll think of a lot of other things that happened in our own classroom that we didn’t get to share with everyone else.”

Selena doesn’t know where photography will take her, but she plans on continuing to take pictures of the things she loves.

“I don’t know if I’m good enough to be a [professional] photographer,” Selena said. “I really just like taking pictures in the summer and I’m hoping to get better. I just like being able to capture things that I see, so I can remember them better. I really like to take pictures of nature, or just things in Michigan; things that I see or people that I’m with all of the time. It’s just capturing the memories.”