Helena Upshaw said that Spirit Week was kind of scary, but she loved it, especially the creativity involved in dressing up and decorating the hallways. Her favorite day was Generation Day, not only because the freshmen got to dress up as babies, but also because she enjoyed building the Gotham City wall theme after school that day. Helena reminisced on the other ideas for the freshmen’s first wall, including Frozen, medieval, and 1920s. She really liked the Class of 2015’s middle school dance theme from Coming Home last year, and her favorite wall this year, outside of her class wall, was the juniors’ camping wall. However, she expressed that she liked everyone’s wall. “I spent a lot of time cleaning up,” she added. At the pep rally, she was shocked by the Black Diamonds’ performance but also “glad Daniel brought them back.”

On Career Day, Helena appreciated convocation speaker Maria Furtado, saying that she was “enlightening” and presented “really good points and ideas about how to prepare for college.” Of the three career classes she visited—engineering, broadcasting, and business—her favorite was engineering. Other Spirit Week themes she would enjoy seeing are character day, Harry Potter day, and culture day, in which people dress up as citizens of different nations and cultures.

Her favorite class is French, and you can find her at tennis, crew, Music Club, French Club, International Food and Culture Club, Key Club, A Cappella Club, Academic Bowl, Book Club, and Nap Club. Helena’s spirit animal is the graceful cat.