Blogger of the Month February 2015: Jasmine Ke

She may be young, but she is a literary force to be reckoned with. I am of course referring to Jasmine Ke, Youth Are Awesome’s Blogger of the Month. From the age of 14, Jasmine has shared with us her love for writing. This passion can be seen in some of her outstanding posts, such as, Finding Your Voice. She is a blogger who is never afraid to dive into the hard questions, like the debate between doing what you love or what reins in the big bucks when choosing a career. Her posts always provoke scintillating conversation and convey the essence of youth. Despite her young age, her eloquence is without a doubt beyond her physical years. Jasmine may seem reserved at first meeting, but through further conversation, one has the chance to peek into her fascinating mind.

Get to know Jasmine on a deeper level in our interview below:

 Q. What/who inspires you to write?

I often like to associate myself with being a visual artist, as art is one of my stronger suits. Being an artist, I tend to observe my circumambient environment with more focus on details. By doing so, I find that inspiration comes from almost anything, from reading a new novel to watching the news or volunteering; inklings of creativity and inspiration is everywhere. I also tend to base a large portion of my articles on issues that I have and used to have with school life, writing, volunteering and so on. I believe I personalize my posts and address problems many youth may be experiencing. A place where I also draw revelations from is by conversing with peers, teachers or family and developing inquiries off of these discussions.

Who I draw inspiration from is difficult to pinpoint exactly. However, I can say that the wonderful volunteers at YAA are definitely one of the reasons for me to push myself more, as they are always a positive influence and continuously try to create a better environment for the YAA council.

Q. What made you want to join YAA?

At first, my purpose of joining Youth Are Awesome was to gain volunteer experience while enjoying my time by writing: one of the areas in which I was somewhat proficient in and loved to do. I also found this program to be an opportunity to practice and hone in on my language arts skills  which are inextricably important to daily life. However, this quickly developed into more than just a volunteering experience as volunteering with fellow YAA youth assisted me in realizing that, with teamwork, youth can create a positive and influential environment.

Q. Many of your blogposts entice the youth perspective. How do you maintain this relevancy?

When writing my compositions, I often question myself using inquiries such as, ‘would I find this interesting’ and ‘how does this entertain and inform youth in an easy-to-digest fashion?’ I often bring my topics to my peers to ask if they would read such an article. Another tactic I use is interviewing youth the same age to gain perspective on my topics. However, more often than not, topics come from problems and difficulties I have; the articles automatically pertain to youth when written. In some cases, the ability for me to change an unrelated topic into a post that relates to youth involves transforming my compositions into editorials which can turn a story that is disconnected to youth into an opinionated piece from a unique aspect connected to youth.

Q. At your young age, what are your dreams and aspirations for the future? Do you think YAA can help you achieve this?

Although it is odd, I do not actually have any specific aspirations for my future. Many youth my age have already planned and structured their future education in order to achieve their objectives, however, I find that I am utterly useless in terms of determining a path for myself. In this manner, the answer to the question would be extremely vague as my ambitions for my career and future only includes the requirement of a challenging, changing and interacting career. What I impose through saying this is that I wish my job is one that will have different challenges everyday which I can discuss and analyze with different teams of co-workers. Through these expectations, I can say that YAA can assist me in gaining experience for working together with people and adapting and accepting others’ ideas.

Q. Which one of your posts is your favourite? Why?

Narrowing down all of my posts to a singular best piece is always something that I avoid, as I love all of my compositions. Because of this, I couldn’t choose one, but rather two. The first piece I would like to emphasize is my editorial on careers. I felt that this addressed a problem that many youth had, especially when nearing higher grades such as students in grade twelve or high school graduates. Although I did not have any firsthand experience, I developed two points of views from talking with my parents and researching opinion pieces online. I also believe that this piece was very personalized as well, as I was (and still am) having problems with choosing a future that I want to pursue. It was intriguing to see replies to my article as well, as I received feedback from many people expressing their opinions and I felt honoured that my article brought to many people’s attention.

My second composition was about volunteering and the controversy behind it… is volunteerism really an act of kindness in today’s society? I wrote this through observing my own faults as my motives of joining the YAA wasn’t to completely dedicate myself in the beginning either. However, I was exposed to an amazing community and, in some way, my source of propulsion changed. Through these observations, I created an article that had opinions contradicting YAA’s mission, making it my first ever ‘satyr-ish’ article. I really enjoyed composing this piece as well, as I could be as cynical as I wanted to be and show that there is a dark side to almost everything. Out of all my articles, this one was also the only one that had a negative, more critical tone to it, making it unique from my other compositions.

Click here to read all of Jasmine’s blog posts