PhotocourtesyofBrandonSeow PhotocourtesyofRishayJain Beverly Lamis: Circus camp counselor and lifeguard

Junior Beverly Lamis juggled the demands of two jobs and walked the tightrope of responsibility this past summer. A counselor at 888 Monkeys Circus Camp and a lifeguard at Greenmeadow Pool and Community Center, Lamis both taught and supervised children, learning new skills along the way.

Lamis and her twin brother, Jack Lamis, made a lastminute decision to become counselors at the camp after hearing about the opportunity from stage tech teacher Jennifer Ellington, who is also one of the directors of the camp. At the camp, the twins taught circus arts — trapeze, juggling, acrobatics, stilts and more — to kids aged 5 to 14.

As a counselor, Lamis ran stations that students rotated through, each focusing on a different skill. “We’re teaching the kids how to do it and pushing them further than what they think they can do,” she said. “For the (skills that require balance), it’s a lot of just spotting the kids because they’re pretty young.”

At performances, Lamis got to see her teaching and the students’ hard work pay off. “By the end of the week, most kids are able to do whichever (skills) they really tried hard at,” she said. “Usually, at the end of the week, we show all of the skills that they learned to the parents.”

The stories her boss told and the specialists the camp brought in gave Lamis a newfound understanding of circus life. “It’s been a surreal experience,” she said. “My boss, he’s part of the circus, so it’s opened my eyes to a whole different volume of life living (as) part of the circus and having to be on the go all the time.”

Apart from her full-day job as a camp counselor, Lamis set aside time to complete summer homework in at Lockheed, I have to apply nearly everything I’ve learned in the rigorous math, science and engineering courses I’ve taken at Gunn, using everything from vector math from Analysis to electromagnetic waves from chemistry and physics, and even computer-vision/programming techniques from GRT (Gunn Robotics Team),” Jain wrote.

At networking events, Jain has been able to learn from the people who work at Lockheed. During the 10-yearanniversary celebration of the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, a NASA sun imager, he heard about the project’s challenges and highlights firsthand. “There’s more than just engineering,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that go into these projects, and there’s a lot of collaboration and teamwork spirit.”

Jain will continue to add more features to his application to analyze different types of data over the next eight months of his internship. “There are real-world impacts to the kind of work that happens over there,” he said.

—Written by Irene Tsen

preparation for classes, go to the gym and work at the Greenmeadow Community Center, where she watched over swimmers as a lifeguard and did maintenance work around the pool and bathrooms.

Despite younger students’ temper tantrums and unruliness, Lamis loved working with them. “It’s really fun to teach them how to do something and then watch them succeed and build on it,” she said. “They always just love to show you the littlest things, and it’s so fulfilling seeing the joy on their faces after they’ll get one trick, and they’ll start to get it over and over again.”

—Written by Irene Tsen