At a place like AHS it’s easy to feel like you’re a small fish in a big sea; minuscule, unimportant, and voiceless. In fact, from attending AUSD schools since kindergarten, I had always assumed that things were run the way the adults wanted them to be, with no room for input from the thousands of students who weren’t supposed to complain because with funding and rankings like these, are you even supposed to complain? It seems as if the proper thing to do would be to disregard your concerns and “be grateful.” No matter what your problems are, they shouldn’t really matter because at the end of the day you’re still receiving a really good education. Obviously, this way of thinking is false, but was how I felt for almost the entirety of my education. 

The Arcadia Civic Youth Council, otherwise known as ACYC, allowed me to understand that school is more than a place where you show up, shut up, and learn derivatives, and if you notice an issue within your community, never think it’s out of your reach to fix. 

I discovered ACYC at AHS’ annual College, Job, Internship, and Volunteer Fair in my sophomore year. When I found out that they were an advocacy group specifically for Arcadia’s youth who listened, campaigned, and fought for the issues within AHS and the city, I was sold. Amongst learning how to exercise your voice in a community, I lend my thanks to ACYC for  picking up other various essential skills.

The first is learning to work with people who don’t hold the same beliefs as you. While AHS students largely hold the same ideology, this doesn’t go for everyone. However, if you want to accomplish something for the betterment of the community, you have to work with these people and not against them. In fact, a lot of times you have to make compromises, because unfortunately, in life you’re not entitled to whatever you desire, which brings me to the next lesson I learned, which is that you can’t always get what you want. 

Sometimes, the answer has to be no, and that frustration is something you need to learn to cope with in order to focus your attention to other projects. Defeat can feel frustrating, but you need to make sure you’re channeling your energy into making that defeat a stepping stone rather than a wound. One way I turned my failures into stepping stones was by learning how to listen to people.

If you want another person to agree with you, you have to know what they want, and the only way that can be established is by listening to them and then taking that information into consideration when presenting your ideas. Something else listening does is that it exposes you to amazing ideas that you never could have come up with yourself. There is always something to learn from another person, and hearing out what your peers have to say will always prove that to be effective. 

Through our ups and downs, ACYC was able to accomplish many successful campaigns including: hosting a self-care event, creating 100 hygiene kits for the homeless, implementing an additional pad/tampon machine at school, collaborating with city council in order to establish transparency in regards to the Black Lives Matter movement, promoting voter turnout among youth, participating in events such as Arcadia History Day and the Downtown Arcadia Patriotic Festival, and so much more!

Through it all, we got to know each other on a more personal level, and were able to maintain that connection virtually in recent months. We’re more than a council, but a support group, and even at times a political discussion group, and we’ll always have each other to lean on. In fact, this year we decided to expand our family by implementing a new mentorship program in order to teach underclassmen the skills necessary to become effective future leaders in representing Arcadia’s youth with workshops, meetings, and bonding events. It is without a doubt that what ACYC has going on will be passed down for years to come. 

I am beyond thankful for what ACYC taught me, what they have done for the community, for the community we formed amongst ourselves, and above all for reminding me that I am more than one of AHS’ 3,100 students. Thank you ACYC, for ensuring Arcadia’s youth that we’re all important, our opinions are important, we have a place here, there will always be people who are willing to listen to what we have to say, and that we will always have the ability to make a difference. 

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to ACYC through our Instagram @arcadiayouthcouncil or email [email protected], we are always open to input!