Freshman Kari Yatsushiro said her biggest accomplishment in life is graduating from her old school with all of the relationships she created with her friends and teachers intact. “I feel like we had super strong relationships and we trusted each other and everything,” Yatsushiro said. 

Yatsushiro went to the Franciscan Montessori Earth School (FMES) for both elementary and middle school. She described her experience as a lot less stressful than high school has been so far, as there was no homework or tests and it was much more student-led, including lots of projects. 

Her favorite teacher at the school was her math teacher, Ms. Gladys Muñoz, who taught her for three years. “She was a great teacher,” Yatsushiro said. 

Yatsushiro’s best memory from FMES was a two-week overnight trip in the woods called Residential, where students would work on normal schoolwork in the morning and enjoy the afternoon out in the wilderness. 

Overall, Yatsushiro said her time at FMES was “pretty amazing… I learned so much from them,” she said. “I’m super grateful for that.” 

Here at La Salle, Yatsushiro’s favorite class is math. She has always enjoyed math and science and she especially likes to learn about how the world works and how math pertains to the world. 

Yatsushiro also enjoys being able to work with others through “family groups” in Mr. Swanson’s Honors Algebra 2/Trigonometry class, so she can work out problems with her friends.  “Even though the problems are infuriating, it’s fun when you finally get them,” she said. 

Yatsushiro said that her favorite classroom at La Salle is the art classroom, where she takes Art Foundations with Ms. Cha Asokan. She chose the elective to try something that might be less challenging for her and more inside of her comfort zone for her first year at La Salle.  

One thing Yatsushiro feels she has accomplished during her time at La Salle is that she has shifted her focus from studying solely to get a good grade, and instead has aimed to truly comprehend the material of her classes. She says she accomplished this by following her own advice to “not [finish] your assignments for the grade, finish it to understand it.” 

Yatsushiro involves herself in three sports at La Salle, one during each season. She runs on both the cross country team and the track team and she is also on the swim team. “I joined sports mainly for the community and meeting new people at La Salle,” she said. “I made a lot of friends through those sports.” 

This year, Yatsushiro joined the Asian American Pacific Islander club. She likes that she can hang out with her friends through the club and, “they give out lots of snacks,” she said. 

Outside of school, she enjoys hobbies such as reading and playing the piano. Her favorite genre of book is romance, and she especially enjoys two books called the “Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” and “Song of Achilles.” 

Along with these hobbies, Yatsushiro also enjoys listening to indie pop music. For example, she listens to artists such as Wallows and The Neighborhood. “I just listen to good vibes in the morning to get me up and drag myself out of bed,” she said. 

Although she is an only child, Yatsushiro said she experiences the feeling of having siblings once a year when her family travels down to Los Angeles for Christmas. “My mom’s entire family is there, so it’s like a big family gathering,” she said. “That’s all my cousins, I’m super close to them. We’re like sisters.” 

In the future, Yatsushiro wants to work in the field of engineering, with a focus on computer science. She has not yet decided where she wants to go to college, but she does hope to visit Japan or Korea in the future. 

As for her goals for herself, “I just want to try my best and do as well as I can and see whatever path leads me to where I need to go,” she said. She is also adamant that she is not going to break herself over becoming valedictorian when she graduates. 

Yatsushiro advised incoming freshmen to not “be afraid to branch out and make new friends,” she said. She also emphasized that students shouldn’t enter high school concerned about potentially drifting away from their friends. “The friends you come with, don’t worry about them too much because if they are your friends, they’ll be with you no matter what,” she said.