Humans of St. Marks — The St. Marker

By Ingrid Yeung ’23

Every year during the Christmas season, St. Mark’s holds many festive activities for the students and faculty to celebrate before winter break. One long standing tradition is Secret Santa. Students and faculty are assigned a peer to give small gifts to secretly for a week, writing letters, sending gifts, or doing other little things to show their appreciation to each other anonymously. This year, however, was a little different. With the complicated situation in the world right now, St. Markers are spread over different continents and time zones. The usual secret Santa activity seemed impossible.

The Monitors didn’t simply give up on the event, though. They came up with a brand-new version of the secret Santa: the Not-so-secret-Santa. Instead of sending gifts anonymously, students and faculty interested in this activity would sign up to participate remotely. The monitors paired everyone up so that they could contact each other through email. Throughout the week, there were many prompts emailed out in order for people to send short, appreciative emails to each other. Ranging from your favorite holiday to sending holiday pictures to each other, the Not-so-secret-Santa allowed St. Marker’s to bond and show gratitude at the end of the year, even during the pandemic.

Lily, one of the head monitors, provided us with some more information on how the monitors came up with this idea as well as her own experience doing the not-so-secret-Santa.

Can you tell us a little bit about your thoughts on this program?

“It was definitely a struggle finding a way to do secret Santa, which is a very fun tradition at our school, and the premise itself is anonymous gifting, online. We wanted to do it, but gift exchange online simply isn’t the same, and anonymity is not quite possible unless we used a third-party platform.”

How did you come up with this idea?

“When we were brainstorming in our meeting, we came to the conclusion that we should do the not-so-secret Santa because we wanted the community aspect without any safety risks or online issues. We liked the idea of smaller gifts (like messages) and sharing little stories, so to facilitate a connection between people, we just paired people up. Doing this event online is a bit more complicated and gifts aren’t really as good virtually; thus, we decided to send out prompts that would create some form of connection or sharing over the week. This event was undoubtedly a group effort, and personally, I think it went as well as it can be online.“

Was there any interesting experience that you had?

“In general, I had a very good experience. I was paired with Dr. Kress and we talked much more than I expected. We shared a lot of heartwarming stories, and since she is new faculty, I felt like I got to know her better. The week was very fun since everyone there’s something new to look forward to.”

Many students and faculties participated in the not-so-secret-Santa. Through this online activity, many of us were able to get in touch with someone we were not familiar with, either a teacher whose class we had never been in or a student in another grade that we barely see in school. Though there were no surprising gifts every day like before, the little messages and support were what people need during this particular Christmas season.

By Cathy Zhou ’21

Have you ever felt an urge to dance around your room during remote learning, just to let out that boredom and craziness that has accompanied you for a whole day? I have. During the pandemic, many of us have found ways to relax. Taylor Zhou’23 has used this opportunity to take dance to another level, pursuing ballet at her local studio and starting the Lyrical Dance club at St. Mark’s.

Taylor would go to her studio once or twice a week to take ballet classes, and even more often when she is on break. “My class routine is basically stretching, barre exercises, center exercises, and pointe work”, she said, “sometimes I also do strength and conditioning exercises. If there’s a performance coming up, I will have additional rehearsals.” Although Taylor has not performed in shows recently because of COVID-19, she is still learning new variations for fun, such as Sleeping Beauty and Cupid.

Yet, the most exciting moment for Taylor is not performing or competing ballet, but simply being able to dance again after injuries. “I get injured often, and it takes a long time to recover,” she said. In June and July, she injured her calf and wasn’t able to dance for three weeks. “That time was like torture to be honest, lol.” Yet, when she was able to dance again, she carried a renewed excitement and gratitude for ballet, more than ever before.

Taylor has danced for around eight or nine years now, but her dance journey has been a bumpy ride. She started in Chinese folk dance when she was six but broke her elbow while doing a cartwheel on a balance beam. She stopped for a year and decided to try Latin dance and then, finally, ballet. “I just couldn’t take my eyes off those ballerinas when I watched them perform on stage”, she said, “watching them dance on pointe shoes so gracefully really fueled my dreams of being a princess.”

After experiencing many forms of dance, Taylor interprets dance not only as an art form. Especially during the pandemic, dance is a way to express her emotions and to portray beauty. She explains, “for example, I’m not used to expressing my emotions in words but dance provides me with a way to say what I want to say with my body, in the form of physical movements.” She believes that dance, especially ballet, is not something far away or something that only professional dancers can do. “Really anyone can dance,” she said, “it’s actually a natural instinct of humans.”

She also sees dance as representative of different cultures. “There are different genres of dance that originated from different places in the world, incorporating various cultural elements,” she explains, “I feel that dance can also be a way to promote diversity in the St. Mark’s community and beyond, to help people understand the importance of it.”

For that reason, Taylor took the initiative to start the Lyrical Dance club at St. Mark’s this year with Jiayi Yu’23, another very talented dancer, in hopes that more St. Markers can try this new art form. “We could feel the beauty of dance and communicate with each other while dancing,” she said. Taylor and Jiayi also hope to bring different styles of dance and choreography to St. Mark’s. “Since the two of us have different dancing backgrounds and have done different types of dance in the past, we are complementary,” said Taylor. “We might even start to prepare for a few programs that can be more involving and fun, and eventually have everyone dance on stage!”