This is the first of four specials in which outstanding HIKI NŌ graduates from the Class of 2020 gather together to discuss their HIKI NŌ experiences and how they feel the skills they learned from HIKI NŌ will help them in college, the workplace and life. They also discuss their disrupted senior year of high school and thoughts on the future as they transition into adulthood during a worldwide pandemic.

This episode features Emily Casey, who graduated from Kalāheo High School on the Windward side of Oʻahu and is now a media arts production major at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts; and Suzanne Tran, who graduated from Moanalua High School on Oʻahu and is now pursuing a degree in neuroscience from Saint Louis University in Missouri, attending classes online while she remains at home on Oʻahu.

Due to travel restrictions and social distancing guidelines, their conversation took place via Zoom, with HIKI NŌ Class of 2018 graduate Marlena Lang (now a journalism major at Biola University) serving as interviewer.

In the show, Emily discusses the skills she learned as the interviewer/writer of a HIKI NŌ story about national PBS C.E.O. Paula Kerger’s visit to PBS Hawaiʻi in January of 2020. Suzanne reflects on what she learned working on a story about a fellow Moanalua High School student with cerebral palsy.

EMILY CASEY (HIKI NŌ Graduate from Kalāheo High School in Windward Oʻahu): “. . .every generation is going to face something that’s going to give them some pushback. You’re allowed to be upset about it.  At the same time, you have to pick yourself up and you have to move on, because life really does go on, and so, just take a moment to feel whatever you’re feeling and then, think about what you’re going to do tomorrow and how you’re going to make it better for yourself and for others.”