Meilin Zhou

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

Name: Meilin Zhou
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Astronomy, parties, music (specifically orchestral, plays clarinet), reading, writing, volleyball

Appearance: Meilin is of Chinese descent. She is of about average height for her age, with a height of 5'5", and weighing 119 pounds, with a lean build and lightly tanned skin. Her face is round, with a small nose, a somewhat wide mouth, and dark brown eyes. Her straight, black hair goes down past her shoulders. She likes to change her hairstyle from year to year, and currently, it is usually put in long pigtails, with bows on her hair ties, and is dyed with pink highlights. She speaks very quickly, and her voice can be described as childlike.

Meilin dresses for comfort and style equally. Her wardrobe consists mostly of soft pastel colours, with some neon shades in the mix. She usually goes to school wearing a graphic t-shirt with a stereotypically cute design, and either a knee-length skirt or jeans depending on the weather. She also owns a lot of shrugs with varying patterns on them, and she wears them over her regular outfits on a semi-frequent basis. She usually wears makeup, but keeps it to a minimum even for special occasions. However, her eyeshadow is often very noticeable, as she likes glitter eyeshadow.

Biography: Meilin was born to second-generation Chinese immigrants Violet and Lin Zhou. While Violet was finishing her business studies in college, she often helped her parents run their convenience store in Milwaukee. It was there she met Lin, an accountant, who had come to the city for work and regularly visited the store. They bonded over a shared interest in literature, and eventually started dating. After four years, they married. A year after that, on March 17th, Meilin was born.

Reading was a big part of Meilin's life from a very young age. Whenever either Lin or Violet read their daughter stories, they encouraged her to say the words along with them, and often bought audiobooks for her to read along to, and wanted to teach her to write early. One of Meilin's favourite early childhood memories is visiting the library with her mother, and bringing home Goodnight, Moon. However, even with all the extra help, she didn't pick up reading as easily as her parents imagined. However, once she did learn to read properly, she learnt to write quite easily. Meilin is still an avid reader, and her favourite genre is mystery, because she enjoys piecing together the puzzles such books present as she reads.

When Meilin was four, Violet became pregnant again. Lin often worried about how Meilin would get along with her new younger sibling, and often took her aside to talk to her about the importance of getting along with others, how to end arguments. He hoped this would quell any sibling rivalry before it began. Meilin did her best to take her father's advice to heart when her little brother, Chen, was born. While there was the occasional argument or slip-up, Meilin and Chen have a fairly good relationship. They often help each other with homework, vent about school and other things to each other, and are quite protective of each other.

Despite being an outgoing and friendly child, Meilin still had trouble making friends throughout elementary school. This was mostly due to her having trouble communicating with others. Even though she had a lot to say, she often found herself forgetting questions halfway through her answers, going off on tangents that only made sense in her head. She also had a stuttering problem, making it harder to understand her. In first grade, Meilin found one answer to her problem. Whenever she had trouble communicating, she would get a piece of paper, draw out what she wanted to say in pictures, and then explained the pictures. Meilin's parents were always worried over her troubles with speech, and eventually got her to go to speech therapy for her stuttering late in second grade, which continued until fifth grade. There, she was encouraged to explain her thought processes out loud, as practice to help eliminate her stuttering. She still does this when talking to friends, out of habit. Speech therapy has helped her a lot, though she still finds talking out loud in a clear and concise fashion more difficult than most.

In sixth grade, Meilin started learning how to play the clarinet for music class. While she saw it as more of an obligation at first, she started to take a liking to it, and concert band music in general. Her interest was mainly due to being impressed by how orchestra players sounded when playing live. Classical and orchestral music have been her favourite genres of music since then. She continues to play the clarinet in the school band, and while she isn't a bad musician, she isn't a particularly good one either.

During the summer of sixth grade, Meilin and her family went camping for a few nights. She hated it, mostly due to the heat and the bugs. However, there was one thing she greatly enjoyed about the camping trip. At night, the sky seemed much brighter and more full of stars than it was in the city. Meilin felt that seeing the stars so clearly made the whole universe seem much bigger, more alive, and less boringly empty. During the camping trip, she and Chen would sit outside at night and gaze at the stars for a long time before going to sleep. This got Meilin interested in the night sky, and the stars. Since she couldn't see the stars as well from the city, she started reading a lot about astronomy, which is still her favourite subject.

While Meilin had a much easier time talking out loud than she had in elementary school, she always felt more comfortable writing than speaking. Writing gave her time to reflect on what she wanted to say, and organize it into something neat and presentable, which would get her point across quicker. She first got involved with creative writing in seventh grade, as an outlet for stress. Mostly, she wrote short stories about subjects on her mind at the time. In high school, she continues to write short stories, and is an active member of the writing club. She often gives writing advice to her fellow writers through the writing club, and through online groups.

When Meilin was in eighth grade, her parents announced that Lin had gotten a job in Chattanooga, so they would be moving there. Meilin felt hurt by this decision, as it meant leaving practically all of her much-cherished friends behind in Milwaukee. The family moved over the summer, with Meilin enrolling in George Hunter for grade 9. For the first few months of high school, Meilin withdrew from her peers due to missing her old friends. In the end, her extroverted nature won out, and she returned to her normal sociable self.

One of the first steps Meilin took to making new friends was to join as many clubs as possible, even if she only had a passing interest in the club's subject matter. Violet insisted that Meilin should join a sports team in high school, so she tried out for the volleyball team. Over the course of the year, she slowly grew to like the sport. She continues to play on the volleyball team, and while she's not really the best on the team, she performs reasonably well. Though she's not really vocal about her liking of the sport, she does practice and train outside of school, either alone or with friends, fairly often.

Meilin first got involved in George Hunter's party scene towards the end of grade 9. Having received a whole lot of invitations from her new friends, she attended to get to know them better. She found that she greatly enjoyed the social atmosphere of parties, since it allowed her to meet and talk to new people with ease. However, she still considers her studies important, so she gives herself a limit of one party every two weeks, with the rest for studying. However, she has something of a hard time saying no to her close friends, so she sometimes ends up going over that limit for them. Since she got her driver's license, she often acts a designated driver due to not liking most alcoholic drinks.  

Meilin often tries to act as a mediator between her friends, to varying amounts of success. She deeply values harmony, and a peaceful environment, and tries to avoid arguing at all, even friendly debates out of fear that it might get personal. Towards most people, she's a very approachable and friendly person. There are very few people that Meilin really dislikes, since she tries to get along with everyone. In addition, she is an optimist, and believes that deep down, everyone is a good person. This leads her to insist on talking to people first before reporting them when others believe they've done wrong, as she thinks there's always the chance it could have been a misunderstanding. She will often keep her complaints to herself out of a desire to not cause any trouble.

So far, Meilin's senior year has gone very well. Thanks to her dedication to her studies, she gets reasonably high grades in the Bs and As range for most of her subjects, and very high grades in the sciences. She has been accepted to the University of Tennessee to major in astronomy, and she is looking forward to university.

Advantages: Meilin is quite sociable, and already has a wide circle of potential allies. Years of playing volleyball has gotten her in somewhat better physical shape than average.
Disadvantages: Meilin still has some trouble communicating via speech, which would only get worse when put in stressful situations. Her unwillingness to cause a commotion in a group could add to this.