Meet Shriya - Shriya is a junior in high school and is working on her own book about podcasting! At school, she is the president of the Science National Honors Society and Lead Organizer of the TEDx Club. Outside school, she works as the Social Media Director for the Project: Empower non-profit, and President of the Teen Council at the local library. In her free time, she loves to sing and spend time with her little brother. She also hopes you enjoy this episode :)

Meet Julia - Julia is a junior in high school and cohost of the Almost Average (formerly Id, Ego, and Us) Podcast. At her school, she has been a member of the National English Honors Society, the school newspaper, the school magazine, the girls track and field/cross country teams, Amnesty International, the Upward Bound Program, etc. She enjoys reading, running, brain teasers, and adventures. Julia aspires to work in a career that allows her to make a positive impact on the world.

In February of 2021, Julia and Shriya started a podcast as young teenagers. They never thought it would be as fun or easy as it was to create something like it. It was something they created because they didn’t feel like they had a lot of chance to control the things in our lives, and they wanted something that was our own.

The podcast was originally called Id, Ego and the Super Ego, but they recently rebranded the podcast to Almost Average Podcast. They share how they came up with the idea, name and focus of their podcast. 

Creating the podcast not only gave them a voice, it helped connect them during covid, and they share that Covid, for all the bad that it brought, made this a lot easier because they learned so many skills to record it.

In our conversation I asked them about their study habits, how they learned them, and if there is a place for them to talk about study habits in school. I was not surprised, but their thoughts made me think about adding that into my practice.

I asked them both about opportunities for leadership or making mistakes in general. School size had an impact on their thoughts and their advice for educators and peers were really easy to implement - listen and see your students as people, find opportunities to use your voice - and public speaking is not as bad as it seems. 

What I enjoyed most was hearing Shriya share an idea and then Julia countering that thought. It was really great to hear two different perspectives at the same time.

You can find Shriya on Linked in at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shriyajo/

Their podcast Almost Average can be heard on all platforms using this link https://linktr.ee/almostaverage