Young Philosopher's Society

For the month of March, YPS is committed to amplifying and raising women’s voices. We have curated a selection of women from the community for whom we have deep respect and would love to share their stories. 

In today’s story, we are spotlighting Priyal Taneja, an outstanding 17 year old attending Harold M. Brathwaite Secondary School who is committed to bringing change on a global level. Priyal is someone who is incredibly accomplished, both in her academics and extracurricular endeavours. As a life-long learner, Priyal has recently devoted her time to research in Quantum Computing. She has attended numerous conferences and continued to explore her passion in this area. 

Priyal speaks about her personal accomplishments and the goals she has set for herself. She is an avid learner who continues to develop and improve herself in any way she can. She speaks about the journey behind accomplishing these goals and how the road to success is not always perfect. 

As a Woman in STEM

In the past few months alone, Priyal has made quite an impact on the Quantum Computing industry. For her, building projects that see real impacts on the people around her have been her driving force. Recently, she has been working towards building a project that can predict early heart diseases to improve late diagnoses. Through these projects, she has mastered the skill of self-learning, which has really helped her hone in on specifics in her field. 

However, it has been incredibly difficult for Priyal in the Quantum Computing realm as a young woman of colour. In our interview, she remarked on an experience she had at a conference in November where almost all of the people sitting in the room were men. Of the few women in the room, she was the only one of colour. With this identity she carries, it becomes hard for her, and several other young women, to find mentors in their field of interest. There lacks a sense of relatability, making it difficult to tell who really is interested in helping. However, despite the lack of help in the field, Priyal noted how this helped in growing her mindset and learning how not to be dependent on others for answers. In fact, she encourages everyone to go out, figure things out on their own and cease to be dependent on things like the internet. 

The Importance of Building a Community

For Priyal, community building is something incredibly important to her. She finds comfort in taking part in several extracurricular activities and being involved with her school community. Clubs and school organisations are opportunities for the student body to come together and work on things that interest them, learning and growing from each other. For the past few years, Priyal’s interests have led her to becoming the Vice President of her school’s DECA group. She enjoys running the logistics behind the club and ensuring that every student has a memorable experience being in DECA. Along with that, Priyal takes initiative by running an overseeing school-wide events with the Student Activity Council. Her goals are to ensure everyone attending Harold M. Brathwaite Secondary School is engaged and proud to be a part of the community. 

Creativity

From a young age, Priyal has been set on creating and innovating. This love for self-expression has now translated into a career path in which she feels incredibly passionate about. From a love of the arts as a child, she has pivoted now to being more business and science minded. She implements that previous love for creation into what she does now, constantly problem-solving and coming up with never before seen ideas. 

Family Orientation: Lessons from Home 

Priyal attributes much of her success to her family and the values she was brought up with. She is extremely grateful to her parents for encouraging her to not only pursue her interests, but excel in the spaces she finds herself in. Seeing as though she was brought up from generations who have persevered through numerous challenges in order to present her with more opportunities than they were given, she uses that history as motivation to continue pushing through all aspects in life. 

Dealing with Academic Pressure and Taking Breaks 

Over the years, Priyal has had her fair share of entanglements of academic pressure. She recalls how not long ago, she would put pressure on herself to excel in everything she did. Over time though, she realised that not being perfect is okay. Making mistakes is not something to be embarrassed about, instead it is an opportunity to learn and progress. Realistically, she notes how the education system pushes for short-term memorization rather than understanding and analysing content and because of this, grades are not an entire reflection of academic capabilities. 

To everyone, struggling or not, Priyal recommends taking breaks. Instead of pushing past your limits and burning yourself out, take a break and come back with a refreshed mind. Having said that, Priyal has had to learn this lesson the hard way. She recounted in the interview how she continued to work vigorously during the December break, leading her to feeling more burnt out than those around her who instead, took that time to reset their minds. She uses that experience as a reminder to relax and recuperate rather than exhaust herself. 

Advice for the Readers 

Priyal took the time to share with us a key mindset she feels has helped shaped her life thus far:

“The key idea that lives with me is to be intentional about everything you do. You want to shape your life for yourself…don’t live your life on autopilot. Make sure you’re thinking through decisions. There’s always this traditional path that’s laid out for us but it’s up to you to change it” – Priyal Taneja 

In this interview, Priyal stressed the importance of being intentional about every aspect of your life. She encourages everyone to think through decisions, to ask themselves “why am I doing this?” She encourages everything you commit to is something that adds value to your life, and it is something you enjoy doing. From school to external projects, the more passionate you feel about something, success will follow suit.