Featured Educator: Shakira Mejia, TYWLS Intern

Shakira Mejia is one of our June interns from the Young Women's Leadership School of East Harlem, a longtime CPET partner school.  

What do you hope to get out of this internship?

Becoming part of the Center for Professional Education of Teacher (CPET) community is a fun and educational learning experience for me. With this internship I want to gain an insight of what each of the three sections of CPET are about and how all three of them work together to achieve something even greater. Although this is not my first job in which I had to be professional, I still want to learn more about how to conduct myself in different workplaces and how to become even more of a team player. Lastly I will want to have a little insight of the impact CPET has on students and teachers, since most of their work is more in the background of schools.  

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Tell us about your future plans (college, major, career, etc.).

This upcoming fall I will be an official Lawrenian, which is what they call students from St. Lawrence University. It was hard picking a college so far away from home, but I think it will be a great experience, and I will learn so much in becoming an independent woman. I want to major in Psychology or Sociology, but I also plan to be on the pre-med track. I want to become a Pediatrician when I am older, but if that does not work, I still want to stay around helping kids strive for the better. If I can’t help in the United States, I will go out of the country and travel, which is what I always dreamed of doing.

If you were to go back to your first day in freshman year given what you know today, what would you tell yourself?

If I was to go back to my freshman self I would tell myself so many things, but the main things I would tell myself are to be more confident and outgoing, and to not be my own self-critic, at least not a harsh one. In the beginning of high school I made myself believe that I was no better than a B average, and on top of that I would not participate in classes. I would not talk a lot to anyone unless they came up to me, and I would never ask anyone for help. Although I later figured out that wasn’t good for me, I believed I was too late. If I took advantage of my first two years of high school, I think everything would have turned out even better for me. So if I was able to go back I would tell myself everything will turn out just fine, but I should not give up myself. 

If you could be a member of any TV-sitcom family, which family would you be part of?

I would want to be part of Full House or Modern Family. Both shows reveal an “actual family,” and how they go through problems and arguments, but at the end of the day they are there for one another. They both have a family which turns out to be bigger than it is because different people are involved in it, even if they aren’t blood related. I think if I was in a sitcom I will want it to be like my family, which is very family oriented. Also, both shows capture the fact that friends are family too. In each show you see how family affects a person, and all they do. In addition, both sitcoms show that at the end of the day, family is family and no one can take that away from you.

If your life was a movie, who would you want to play you? What would it be like? What song would you feature?

I don’t know who will play me, but if my life was a movie I would want it to be a comedy, adventure, and action movie, something with a mixture of Little Rascals, The Goonies, White Chicks, and Grease. The part of The Goonies that I want is the fact they went out into the world and had a fun dangerous adventure, while doing something that overall helped their friends and family. Little Rascals shows friends and family working together to later on win the race, although they fought and got mad at each other, giving us some action as well as romance. Part of it will be from White Chicks because it had action and it showed that you can try and try over again till you finally get what you want. I also want the comedy in the movie, because everyone loves funny movies. Although Grease has nothing to do with any of it, I will like for there to be a dance scene, since I love dancing. Lastly I don’t know why but I would want "Eye of the Tiger" to be one of my songs since it is a perfect song for action and to fight for what you want.