Photograph by Atticus Li, Humans of the Dub

Do you think it`s ever possible for you to ever really know someone?

I think it’s possible to know somebody to a certain extent, but I feel like certain factors about peoples` personalities they’re more willing to hide like especially things that they might be ashamed of, or they think people might not like them. There will always be going to be a couple of things that people won`t tell anybody about themselves, but yeah I think it falls back to like the shame aspect.”

I believe that if you can be radically honest and transparent than a lot of this anxiety and stress of would go away and if people weren’t shamed. How well do you know yourself?

I feel like I know myself pretty well I would say that I know myself better than anybody know me. I guess like a big part of my personality is like I’m pretty levelheaded, so especially when I’m around other people like I like to think about what I say before I say it. And like think about my actions before I act on them, and that probably falls back on that I don’t want people thinking I’m stupid. I just don`t want to do something or say something that I would regret and want to take back. But, if it’s just me by myself, and I’m not interacting with other people I can be kind of reckless with my actions, and I think it’s just because I know it won`t impact anybody. I’m usually more worried about others than I am about myself.

Do you have any advice for people that are not very levelheaded that are trying to get to a point where they are not so reckless?

Yeah, I mean it’s really easy for people to think only in the moment. Everybody has a future and so you have to think about what you’re doing now is going to impact you tomorrow or in a year in 10 years or whatever so like you know people who put like stupid stuff on social media like how is that going to impact you when you’re looking for a job in a year or like what if your grandma sees out or something like that like I don’t know what your future self seeing.

What do you see yourself in the future?

Hopefully being a lawyer, I don’t know. I tend to play things safe and so I like to collect push my self out of my comfort zone. So for me like it’s really easy for me to talk to someone like one on one, but it’s harder for me I need to like you know stand up in front of a classroom and talk to people it’s on like oh I could see myself doing something like Patent laws or foreclosure or whatever like something that is more individualized yeah exactly and like trial corner where I have to like be on the floor defending somebody like that’s really scary to me. But it’s more exciting, and so I don’t know

What you think is holding you back issues like there’s a balance or I like is a balance between plane to save having to reckless

I think probably like the deep underlying thing of what is holding me back is just like confidence like I don’t have confidence in myself, and I’m always like you know what if I get up there and I don’t know my stuff and I sound stupid and everybody laughs at me, and I never get a client over again, and it’s like OK what’s the probability of it happens? For me, it’s this constant struggle between this realistic scenario and the scenario that I just make up in my head, and I am not confident in myself, and I have anxiety about it. I am just scared, I want to succeed so badly, and I want to fulfill everyone`s expectation including myself.

So, what made you pick being a lawyer?

Starting in high school I became more and more interested in politics, and then more you read about the news, and there is a lot of bad things that are happening in the world right now, trouble with immigration, and overseas and humanitarian crisis. Even if I just go through law school and even doing something small like tax laws, I would be known about laws, and in a certain situation. In a case where I want to help someone in the way that could help them.

Do you do any small rituals that make your day better?

I started journaling and because I feel like it is easier to process your thoughts when you write them down. For me, it is important to take care of my body, wash my face. I will light candles, so my room smells good, I will read, draw, or paint. Sometimes I will do yoga.

If you could teleport your thoughts to everyone in the world, pick three things you would send.

I would like to erase the stigma around mental illness people don’t treat mental illness like physical illness. And kind of like just feel better, like you are depressed, and just go for a run, eating disorder just eat, but it`s not that easy. I wish people can talk about mental illness like the flu, and I think that would solve so many issues. Like school shooters and a lot of people in prison have a mental illness. Like a lot of the crime could be eliminated if they had the treatment.

This is very nontrivial, and I am very pro-choice. It doesn`t matter when or why a person would get an abortion, but if you don`t like it, you don`t have to prevent someone from getting one. I have known people that had to get an abortion, in cases where if their child had been born, they would have been seriously deformed or wouldn`t have survived for a month or something. Some people think that abortion is like murder, and for people like that they are just making people feeling even worse about it. For others

Even if you are not ready to have a baby, great, that is up to you. I don`t think it should be up to anyone else. For people that are looking for an abortion, they would either kill themselves, or injure themselves, or put their kids up for adoption. Three hundred thousand kids in the adoption system or being raised in a situation where they are not wanted in the first place which is unfair for the kids.

My third one, I guess probably the way drug use and addiction is handled, and I think it is all wrong. The majority of people that are in prison because of drugs. Forcing someone to go cold turkey and spend a year in prison. And then just letting them go, what are they going to do? Oh, I am never going to touch drugs again or are they going to back to drugs?

This goes back to the mental illness, I think that addiction is a form of mental illness I don`t think it’s a choice, I don’t think people choose to be addicted to something. Addiction and drug use in the criminal justice system, I don’t think it’s handled well.