PAN QI: Mathematics, prom memories and Chinese food

 Pan Qi doesn’t like math as much as people think she does.

“Math is my least favorite subject,” she said, “Everybody thinks I’m good at math, but no.”

Pan came to Stratford from China in 2014, when she was a sophomore. It was “totally different” from her school in China.

“I saw a lot of activities and clubs going on which I never saw in China,” she said. “Stratford was a very small private school compared to my school, because my school had like 1,500 people.”

She said coming to a new country and school was hard for her at first. She is close friends another Chinese exchange student, senio Shijing Gong,

“The hardest class I ever took in my sophomore year was Mrs. (Hollie) Wangerin’s class. I struggled every night just for that class,” she said.

Something Pan does to feel closer to her home is cooking Chinese food.

“After I came here, there were only a few times I could eat Chinese food, and it wasn’t very authentic to me, so I just learned to cook it by myself,” she said.

Pan said her favorite memory from her time at Stratford was prom.

“I was kind of surprised because Om invited me, and Shijing and I were planning on going together,” she said “But we both got dates, so we went [with them] and it was a lot of fun.”

Pan’s favorite subject this year is watercolor. “It’s very relaxing, and it’s something I don’t get stressed out about,” she said.

Like most other seniors, Pan has come down with a bad case of senioritis.

“I think everybody has it,” she said. “I have it because I got done with the SAT very early, so after that I stopped working.”

Pan said she will miss her teachers the most.

“My teachers are so nice and really care about the students,” she said. “In China, the relationships between the teachers and students are different. We don’t get along as well as [the teachers and students] do here.”

Pan said she will also miss English teacher Dr. Ann Dromsky and the rest of her current host family. Carolynn Dromsky is a junior at Stratford.

“Right now I’m living with Dr. Dromsky, and she really cares and takes care of me very well,” Pan said. “She’s very nice and I will miss her after I leave.”

Pan plans to attend The University of California-Irvine to study quantitative economics.