- Student Success
No matter how long you spend at Hangzhou International School, you can always try new things and discover your passion. Eventually, it will be your turn to go off into the world on your own and explore the possibilities, which is exactly what our seniors are getting ready to do. We sat down with Gabriel L., a senior that has been at HIS since Grade 9, to ask him what the future holds.
Gabriel L. is a senior who, in his time at HIS, has been able to pursue his own passions within the arts. Balancing his school life and his artistic work in the fashion industry, Gabriel has been able to discover the importance of diversity in education, and how you can apply things you learn in high school to the arts.
Hi Gabriel, can you introduce yourself?
Hi, so I'm Gabriel, I'm a senior student at Hangzhou International School. I’ve recently been accepted by Parsons School of Art and Design as a Fashion Design major, and I also got a conditional offer from theUniversity of Michigan as an Art and Design major.
What made you want to pick these programs?
Honestly, I feel like I've been interested in art ever since I was in kindergarten, but during my artistic journey, I have really felt like there's huge power behind the arts.
Art and design are not always about beauty – they have the power to communicate with society at large. You can use art as a tool to make our community or world a better place. You can use art to express yourself, but at the same time, you can also use art to fight for what you believe in.
How has your time at HIS inspired this choice?
I would say there was definitely a huge moment in Grade 10 because we had to do a personal project for theMYP (Middle Years Programme).
You had to choose what subject you're really interested in and make an independent community project tied to your passion. I remember I chose arts and did a fashion design program, also related to social studies and sociology.
I would say the moment that I finished the project is kind of the moment I felt like fashion design and artsgenerally was what I wanted to do in the future. After that, I started my own business, my own fashion brand, and became an entrepreneur.
I really think at HIS, there has been a lot of opportunity to teach me how to be successful, how to help people, and how to make the global community a better place.
What are you most excited for about going to university?
I want to say there’s definitely some small things.
It’ll be my first time living in a boarding home, having a roommate, and living in a different country. So, I really think HIS has helped me to build a very strong foundation for that through making friends here from around the world.
Right now, when I travel internationally or when I meet people from different cultures, I feel really confident to make friends and communicate with them. At university I’m sure that’ll continue.
Do you have a specific career you want to go into yet?
From a very young age, since junior high, I’ve been an editorial model in the Chinese fashion industry.
During my experience flying around the world, going to different fashion weeks as a model, shooting campaigns, runways, designing clothing, running my own business, I really think the industry has taught me a lot
At the same time, I think my time in high school at HIS has also helped me, because in the fashion industry, some values are not very correct, like body shaming, or the different classes of society. It's very obvious in abad way.
However, in high school, the teachers and the HIS values are much more correct and much more valuable. So, I think my time here has really helped me balance between the fashion industry, real society, and my school life. HIS has helped make me who I am.
Right now, when I see something unfair in the fashion industry, I would stand up and fight against it because of the values I learned here.
So in the future I will keep working on my fashion brand, my business, and I'll also be interested in studying politics, international relations, and perhaps helping to manage other people’s work and at the same time creating my own art pieces.