Soccer

I love playing and watching soccer. I’ve been a fan of Arsenal in the Premier League since I became obsessed with them playing the soccer video game FIFA twelve years ago. I still play soccer frequently for fun. When I’m at school in Boston, I play on various intramural teams and at pickup games on some weeknights. When I was working in Italy, I played on a team with all Italian-speaking teammates, which was a super fun opportunity to immerse myself in the culture as well as share in a sport I love, which served as a universal language that connected me to my teammates.

Playing soccer in Boston

My Italian soccer team

Music

I’ve played guitar since I was in middle school, after watching the movie “Sing” with my grandmother and sister. The artistic excellence displayed by the two porcupines in the movie who could shred on the guitar compelled me to start learning to play songs I liked on my dad’s guitar. Slowly, I started playing more, getting better, and getting greater enjoyment from playing, which became a cycle that embodied a deep love for the instrument.

In high school, I played in bands at school and outside of school and started to write my own songs, combining my passion and talent for guitar reluctantly with my ability to sing (just about well enough to be the frontman for a rock band). I have music published on Spotify under the moniker of my high school band, Peabrain, and am currently working on an album with my band at college, which goes by the similarly visionary name of Pigeonhelmet.

I've also played in a couple other bands during my time at school in Boston, including playing rhythm guitar and holding down lead vocals for Youth Overrided, and playing drums and handling vocals for Westland Project.

I also started DJing in the past year, after discovering my love for electronic music in Ibiza. I love playing (and making) afro house, bass house, and drum and bass. I also enjoy playing more commercial sets at gigs around Boston.

DJing at Cask and Flagon in Boston

DJing a private event on a boat on the Charles River

Philosophy

Before my junior year of high school, I was almost exclusively interested in STEM. My experience in the humanities had left me thinking that the discipline lacked both concrete answers about life and the rigor required to arrive at such answers. This was until I took Jared D’Onofrio’s AP Language and Composition course during my junior year at Francis Parker School. He opened my eyes to how the analysis of literature could inspire new insights about the nature of ourselves and our reality. This realization hit me like a ton of bricks and led me down a rabbit hole of philosophy podcasts, and, eventually, philosophy books and essays, which fundamentally changed the way I saw the world. I began to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the human experience, which I find to be derived from its inevitable end and intrinsic chaos.

The work of the Existentialists, particularly those in the Absurdist camp, speaks to me the most. This group of authors has most influenced my philosophy of life, which can be simplified roughly to the idea that the lack of inherent meaning in our existence is liberating, as this lack of predetermined meaning gives us the opportunity, circumstance and time permitting, to carve out almost whatever form of meaning we desire. I’ve recently taken particular interest in Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, which, while certainly applicable to his world when he wrote it in 1967, I find to be even more applicable to today’s world, where social media and consumerism have taken his concept of the Spectacle to extremes that perhaps even he could not have foreseen.

Languages

As a Latin American, I grew up around spoken Spanish at my grandparents’ house, then deepened my knowledge with studies in high school, and, in the past couple years, conversations in Spanish with people in Madrid, Sevilla, Barcelona, Medellin, and San Juan to achieve a level somewhere between proficiency and fluency. My knowledge of Spanish formed the basis of my studies of French at college, and my learning of Italian, somewhat out of necessity, during my four months working in Perugia, Italy.

I love furthering my knowledge and understanding of these languages through individual study, films, music, and conversations, because I believe that everyone has their own story to tell, and that, within every story, is some nugget of wisdom or some cool experience that promises to enhance the life of others, and that, by learning these languages, I increase the sample size of potential people I can form connections and have these exchanges with.

Surfing

I discovered a passion for surfing only after moving to Boston for college. My first summer back home in San Diego, some experienced friends brought me out and I felt the thrill of catching a wave for the first time. I've had the pleasure of surfing at home in San Diego, as well as in Rhode Island, Portugal, and Puerto Rico. Although I am by no means a pro, even if I only catch a few good waves, I still get to experience my favorite part of surfing: the tranquility I feel for the rest of the day after being in the ocean.