Yooni

Yooni K. Park ’22-’23 does not totally know why she was nominated for this.

She hails from Lexington, Massachusetts; it’s not like she went far from home. She loved music in high school, and she loves music now. She’s always been a little introverted, and she’s always been focused on her studies — she’s been a Computer Science kid since freshman year, though she just added a joint in Psychology.

She certainly has changed. Compared to high school, she’s more comfortable trying new things and meeting new people. She’s learned how to ask questions and how to apologize. She’s embarrassed herself in Computer Science office hours. She’s tried dance and creative writing. She moved in with a blocking group of people she didn’t know too well, and she’s been through at least one significant breakup (if you saw her at Yardfest last year, no you didn’t).

But has she changed the most of the entire senior class?

“I think at my core I’m still the same person,” she tells me, sitting with her legs crossed on a piano bench in one of the music rooms near the Dunster Grille. She looks polished, wearing an oversized white button-down and flowy black pants.

Park started college like many: with a little excitement, a little stress, a bit of imposter syndrome, and a lot of uncertainty about what she wanted to study. In freshman year, she was overwhelmed by comp culture, which made it hard to enjoy school. “Everyone would be comping 20 clubs. And I would be like, ‘oh, I don’t want to be interested in those things,’” Park recalls. “Am I supposed to be interested in those things?” She was completely uninterested in pre-professional anything at the time; she didn’t even know what consulting was.