LeeAnn Mills considers herself an introverted ambivert, because she used to be a shy person until she worked in a more public-related job, so she had to open up and get adjusted to the attention. She used to dislike anything in front of people and now she volunteers to do presentations in front of others and feels comfortable speaking to others more. When necessary, LeeAnn can act more extroverted, but she is more on the introverted essence. She knows she is unable to live without her glasses and medicine because those are two necessities that she would not be able to survive without. LeeAnn is unable to live without an alarm, time, and music, so she could live without her phone, but she would need it for those two reasons. When introducing herself, LeeAnn makes it known that she considers herself weird and wants to make sure other people are aware of that. Her favorite Holiday is Halloween because it has the least interaction, it ends the quickest, and is the most fun. A Different Kind of Beautiful by Alec Benjamin is her favorite song, her favorite artist is Faouzia because her voice is amazing since it is a deep and feminine voice, but there is no mistaking her for a man. She also likes Nico Collins and Bea Miller. The biggest pet peeve of LeeAnn’s is directed to those walking slowly and those walking in groups in the hallway that block the sides. Her biggest fear is wet clothing because it is a sensory overload, and she remembers when she was playing with water balloons, she knew she disliked the feeling of wet clothes. When she had a bucket of water dumped on her, she described it by saying every way one can sense something was tied to water. Everything she could hear was water, everything she could smell was water, everything she could taste was water, everything. She also dislikes rain. Playing an instrument is something LeeAnn has always wanted to do, but is unable to, since she thinks she does not have a single musical bone in her body. Her father has a tuba and can play something back to you, no matter if it is in tune or not. Spending time and speaking face to face while avoiding small talk is LeeAnn’s love language. She wants to know the nitty-gritty about her friends, such as talking face to face about phases of the moon and nostalgic 2000’s things. She is currently taking Spanish 4, and her sister can speak fluent Spanish. Other than her height and her glasses, LeeAnn thinks the first things people notice about her are her ‘flangy’ movements, where she moves quickly and rather animated, and her laughter which sounds like she is unable to breathe. LeeAnn knows her younger self would be proud of who she became today since she is not always locked in her room anymore and has wonderful friends to talk to and hang out with. Her great grandmother is someone she wishes she could have dinner with because she passed away when LeeAnn was eight, since there are very limited memories of her in LeeAnn’s mind, and she wants to get to know her grandmother. Currently, LeeAnn thinks she is the happiest she has ever been. She used to not care about what she does and cruise through life. However, she enjoys the time she spends with herself, napping and going through high school.
She is most proud of her writing prowess, which is her ability to write skillfully. Friendships and her ability to put herself into her friendships are another thing LeeAnn is proud of, like her relationship with Riley Mohn, a sophomore that she practically ‘adopted’ accidentally, which she just allows herself to let the friendhip take whatever turns it needs. As a writer, LeeAnn states that “flaws make a person more complex, and it gives them more aspects.” She’s also proud of getting into the college she wanted, which is the University of Iowa. Her favorite book is Time Bomb by Joelle Charbonneau, which takes place over the summer and they are stuck in a room and one person in the room created the bomb, but they do not know who.The Darkest minds by Alexandra Bracken is LeeAnn’s favorite book series which is a dystopian series where kids are born with powers relating to the colors of the rainbow. Red, orange and yellow are classified as dangerous. Green and blue are just regular powers. The main character is Ruby, who has orange powers and accidentally erases her parent’s minds. The quote she lives by is from Maya Angelou, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you” because as a writer, she feels she needs to write and get her stories out. She thinks that putting how she determines a piece is well-written is rather subjective, and she says perfection is something that belongs to math assignments; one that has specific answers that do not differ from several students. When a teacher gives full credit for an assignment, that can be for the grammar or the spelling or the punctuation, because a piece of literature can be rewritten thousands of times defferently and still answer the question with proper grammar. She determines her pieces are well-written when they have a deeper meaning, and use an extended and varying vocabulary. The best writing tool for LeeAnn is the thesaurus, and she thinks that nobody is better than a thesaurus. Sentance starting choices are something that LeeAnn dislikes, when they start with the exact same word. Determining a writing style is something LeeAnn loves. Writing ‘says’ and ‘said’ is something LeeAnn thinks has a specific place that fits because it is a basic and commonly known term, but she thinks that it is something that needs varying instead of being the same word in different forms. Reading and writing are her biggest passions. Writing has been a passion of hers for a while, which she used to not be certain how good she was at it, until she found it easy and natural to write an essay in under 30 minutes. She says that “writing is the fuel to my fire,” and it has been since she was young. LeeAnn does not find any forms of writing difficult. Her weaknesses as a writer are spelling and certain aspects of grammar. She remembers she had once spelled monkey as ‘monci’ before. She knows that her writing style is very elegant like a scholar from the 1800s, she says she sounds smart when she writes, and she is able to come up with ideas easily. LeeAnn does not believe anything exists if it cannot be proven, agnostic even, and she just enjoys what she has. She knows that science can be proven and she remembers a man once said “if you take away all the books in the world, science, fantasy fiction, science books will come back the same, since science’s job is to constantly disprove itself.” When asked about morals, she knows that morals do not necessarily start from religion, and she knows that it is wrong to commit crimes because it just is.
Mrs. McCarthy-Wright is LeeAnn’s biggest role model. When she had interviewed her, getting to know her and her life was one of the most enriching experiences LeeAnn has ever had, and she knows people can go to her for anything. LeeAnn gets notes and little messages from Mrs. McCarthy and she loves knowing the effort and getting to know people. Before LeeAnn met Mrs. McCarthy, her role model was her sister, who is still a huge role model in her life. Her sister is 28 years old, and she is incredibly smart and took two languages. LeeAnn enjoys knowing that her sister can have fun and is not afraid to love and show care. When LeeAnn has headaches, her sister helps soothe her headaches. LeeAnn’s sister is in the medical field, and has shown how determined she is to become a doctor. LeeAnn likes laughing with her sister, and when her sister showed a song to LeeAnn that was an acoustic and soft cover of a hard rap song. The best advice LeeAnn has recieved recently was “get out of your comfort zone because that’s when the lightbulb moments happen” from Mrs. McCarthy-Wright because people should not take life too seriously and they should live more carefree. When asked if LeeAnn would change anything about herself, she answers that she has forced herself to accept who and what she is and that everything will come out okay because she always has had herself. She believes that her past self from two years ago would have written a three-page response on what she would have changed about her. LeeAnn is okay with the fact that some days she might not like everything about herself at the moment, but she knows that thought can be temporary, and it is okay to feel that way.
As someone with diagnosed chronic anxiety, she has lived with stress for a while, she always likes plans listed ahead of time, she always asks questions even as a kid. It has gotten better for LeeAnn over the years with medicine and therapy, and she still has panic attacks. LeeAnn knows her stress helps her create to-do lists and helps her stay organized to a schedule. On a random day in seventh grade, LeeAnn started to uncontrollably put her head to her shoulder and she would also randomly kick. The doctor said it was a muscle spasm, but it was tourrettes. She was called a ‘sudden acute onset’. She went to a neurologist that specializes in tourrettes and was able to get proper medication and how to control it easier.
