New York City Regional – Staff Spotlight

Val | Senior  | Pansexual | 2017 – Present

What is your favorite experience with LGBTQ+ of FIRST?

This might be more of a collection of experiences, but I’ve always loved the late night karaoke sessions we’ve had on the Discord server. Even though people always seem stressed from school or work, we sometimes have these karaoke sessions that just go on for hours with songs from hit musicals, cartoons, and competition. While we sometimes only know each other as a group of names, pictures, and words, karaoke and conversation bring a feeling of togetherness, an organic display of who we are behind carefully curated collection of thoughts we control within our keyboards. It’s a reminder to me that there’s always someone there for support.

What are you most looking forward to this competition season?

I’ll be doing game announcing training at New York City Regional, but I’m super excited to see how strategy varies between different regions. I haven’t had too much of an opportunity to focus in on regional variants of strategy in the past, so I’m hoping we get to see the game evolve into different branches.

What is one cool thing you’ve learned lately?

I recently learned how to make origami cranes in my Japanese class, as we’ve been working on a 千羽鶴(Senbazuru) to send to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The process of making origami is very soothing, and papercraft in general is very comforting.