About Me

My name is Maisie Rennie and I am a Freestyle Academy student. My core value in life is happiness, as it is one of the things that motivates me the most to do the things that I love! There is no point living your entire life in misery when you could be spending your time on something that brings you joy.

Outside of school, I like to dance, hang out with friends, cook, bake, and basically do any type of arts and crafts I can get my hands on other than sowing (not a very big fan of using the sewing machine). After school, you’ll either find me in the Mountain View High School Dance Spectrum room practicing routines, or you’ll find me at home cooking or baking with my mom. I also enjoy going out to study, chat, play some video games, and more with my friends at cafes, or staying home and doing crafts like embroidery or making things out of cardboard.

One thing I expect from myself this school year is to stay organized and on top of my work but to also make sure that I have time for myself. I’ve been told that junior year is the most stressful one, and I can already tell with the amount of commitments I have as well as the workload that has already been given to me this year. It was very overwhelming, and it still is as more and more intensive projects are being assigned and bigger events have to be planned, but I know I can do it. I expect myself to persevere even through these stressful times and become familiar with having a busy schedule but still find time for myself.

Art Reflection

Using one of Dacer Keltner’s “Eight Wonders of Life”, by connecting to our own personal stories, experiences, thoughts, feelings, memories, or questions. “Verwaltungsgebäude (Administrative Building)” (1964), an installation by Gerhad Richter was the artwork that brought me awe. The administrative building blurs by my vision, passing by in less than a second. Yet at this moment, the image of the administrative building is left engraved in my mind but it’s not completely clear. It gives me nostalgia whenever I go on the Caltrain, or on the bullet train while I’m in Japan. I can just see the millions of buildings and homes passing by in seconds with barely any time for my eyes to adjust to really look at what I’m seeing before it disappears. I have an epiphany. In my mind this is just another town, another building on my travels. But to the people who work there, to the people who live in that town, that is their entire world. That is their life. I was lucky enough to see these few moments of their life before passing through to the next. It made me think about Mountain VIew. How Mountain View is my entire life, my world. Yet, to those passing by on the Caltrain, it’s simply just another small town along their journey. It reminds me how small and insignificant one can be in this world. My community in Mountain View is so small when compared to so many other towns that are littered across the world. It brings me regret, knowing that there is so much I don’t know about, and yet it makes me feel secure. I know that there is somewhere for me, even when compared to the entire world where I might be insignificant as a grain of sand in the desert. But I still make a part of that desert sand, and while I might not matter to the entire world, I think I matter to those special people.  

Using Adobe After Effects, we created a short video to showcase our reflections.