"She's a librarian's dream!" Standley Lake Teen Librarian Meagan gushes about volunteer Lucy. "A good-honest-kid. One of the absolute best."
Lucy joined the Standley Lake volunteer team in 2023, but her relationship with the Library goes way back.
"I've been going to the Standley Lake Library ever since I was a really little kid, so I've always been a part of the community," Lucy says. "When I was younger, I remember going to Story Time, and now I help set them up! I wanted to give back for everything this Library has given me when I was younger."
Some of the staff at Standley Lake have known Lucy since her childhood, including Meagan.
"There were a couple of times she went to my middle school, and we did a book club," Lucy says. "Meagan really helped me get set up and feel welcomed at the Library. I love Meagan, she's amazing!"
"I was immediately impressed when I met Lucy," Meagan says. "She carries herself with such grace and composure, but she is so humble about herself."
One of Meagan's favorite stories about Lucy's time as a volunteer happened about a year ago when Meagan was trying to get Lucy to think about college, but Lucy wasn't giving her much back.
"I kept saying: 'Coming up so soon,'" Meagan laughs.
Then, after one conversation about her future plans, Lucy confronted Meagan and said, "I need to tell you something."
"I was thinking to myself, 'Oh no, I've driven her off, and she's never coming back! What have I done?'" Meagan recounts. "She took a deep breath and then said, 'I'm only a junior!' And then she apologized to me for the mix-up, even though it was completely my mistake and I had somehow convinced myself that she was a senior! It was hilarious, and she was so sweet when she told me. Now that she's actually graduating and getting ready to leave for college, I'm feeling bereft. It's starting to feel real now! She will be greatly missed."
Greatly missed, yes, but Lucy is looking forward to wrapping up her high school era.
"Senior year has been...long," she says with a sigh. "I'm counting down the days until I graduate. I'm ready for the next chapter. I'm nervous about what's going to happen, and I'm a bit sad about moving. But I'm also ready for school to end."
Once she graduates, Lucy is hoping to pursue a degree in neuroscience, with a minor in political science.
"I love the study of the brain and why we are the way we are," she says. "I want to help people, and I'm really interested in how social structure and our brain wiring plays into our everyday lives."
In her free time, Lucy dives into one of her many creative hobbies.
"I do a lot of knitting and sewing," she says. "I love crafting and making things. I also love music — anything to do with music."
Lucy plays piano and bass guitar. She is also part of the tech crew at school.
"I help build sets for our productions, which is really fun," she says. "It's weird because all my interests are really artistic, but then I want to go into a science-focused major. I like that I can pursue both those passions."
As a volunteer, Lucy puts those skills to use and is often in charge of preparing crafts for Story Time and making sample projects for programs. She also designs the display board in the teen section and helps select books for teen displays. As for Lucy's love of books, that she attributes to her grandmother.
"She worked at a library in Vermont, and she would take me to her work," Lucy remembers. "She would always have the Eloise books checked out for me because I loved them so much. I really got my love of reading from her."
These days, it's Six Crimson Cranes — "That one was so good!" — and Piranesi.
"My aunt gave it to me with no context, and it ended up changing my brain," Lucy says. "I loved it so much. I love books I have to put down and just sit and think about for a while."
Lucy also recommends Interior Chinatown, a book that discusses the Asian immigrant experience of living in America.
"I love the way it's written — kind of like a movie script," Lucy says. "It also connected to my experience and my family's experience being Asian immigrants living in America."
As Lucy explains, her grandpa's family sent him to the U.S. when he was 13 to escape from the spread of communism.
"He came on his own with just a trunk and a bag of mandarins," Lucy explains. "The customs officers told him he couldn't bring food into the country, so he sat down in front of the officers and ate all the mandarins. He was sick afterward, but that kind of sums up what my grandpa was like."
Lucy always has an interesting story to share and never hesitates to explain her point of view, ask questions or investigate a topic more deeply.
"Lucy never fails to astound me with her depth of curiosity and quest for new experiences and knowledge and her approach to new concepts and thoroughly deliberated ideas," Meagan says. "Our conversations vary wildly from topic to topic, which is so fun. We'll start out talking about books, movies and music that we like or don't like and then end up talking about the societal and industrial impacts of women and minorities in the arts and sciences, whether seen or unseen. It sounds cliché, but I have truly learned a great deal from Lucy and am a better person for having known her."
Thank you for all that you do for JCPL, Lucy!
