Half an hour prior to our scheduled interview time, I coincidentally bump into Orchid Lee in the A. Y. Jackson Foster library. At five feet eight, she towers over me like a beanpole. “Hey,” I remind her of our rendezvous without saying much. She catches my drift, but doesn’t seem too happy. Realizing that her hands are full of Chamber Music Night tickets in their most primitive form – mass produced in columns and rows on pages of print-size paper – I immediately understand. Our meeting is adjourned.

Spontaneity has always been the seventeen-year-old’s best friend. With a “volcanic” agenda filled with conferences to attend, proposals to write, and phone calls to make, it is impossible to expect each one of them to run smoothly. Some fall short of success because they stop at unpredicted obstacles. Lee, on the other hand, comes up with an alternative route every time, even if it means someone else’s plans will be ruined in the process. Case in point: mine.

But it all works out. She offers me another time (“we’ll take care of it at 3:15”), and we choose the school’s cafeteria as our venue. As the bag-trotting kids around us indicate, many students are preparing for their much-awaited Friday exodus. My interviewee is no different. “Ok, this better be over quickly,” she complains, half-jokingly. I feel guilty to inform Lee that I have just under fifteen questions to ask her, but do so anyway. She likes it direct. “I hate it when people do desperate things because they can’t get what they want in a fair situation.” She is alluding to her experience in last year’s law class, where practically everyone disqualified her from taking bonus mark quizzes because she left them empty-handed by winning every time. “Whatever. It’s over. I have other things to be concerned about anyway.” Indeed – the twelfth grader, who has held her title of Music Council President for the past two years, can’t be bothered by a little jealousy. She would have neither the time to fulfill her responsibilities as the leader of the school’s largest organization, nor the effort to execute her duties as the Co-Chair of Super Council, the Publications Head of Enigma magazine, and a volunteer at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. And these are only her more recent activities.