Photos: Rachel Nadeau
Jai Chadha is a rising senior at Minnetonka High School—and he’s already organized a TED talk.
Our annual Senior Spotlight feature highlights the high school careers of some of the Lake Minnetonka area’s brightest young people. We talked to creative members of class of 2020 about high school (and beyond) and what art means to them. Read the other spotlights here: Grace Hanson, Vincent Cao, Anna Wander
Jai Chadha is a rising senior at Minnetonka High School—and he’s already organized a TED talk. The TEDxYouth@MinnetonkaHS event took place last November, and the theme was overcoming adversity. Jai worked closely with school administrators over the summer to get a team of students ready to put on the event.
And his favorite class is scientific research. “I am really driven in this class because of the flexibility of the course and the individuality of the course,” he says. And, because of the work he’s done in the class, he’s been invited to attend the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers International Conference and the International Science and Engineering Fair.
He’s also in a yo-yo club, a business club, and volunteers for several MHS programs to help new students adjust to school. He is a tutor through the Backpack Tutoring program and is in the school orchestra. As a member of the orchestra, he went to Greece over spring break and enjoyed sharing his dance moves with people he met.
“Every single time, people always smile when they see me dancing,” he says. “And no matter how silly I make myself seem, I love seeing those smiles because I know that I am making someone else’s day just a little bit better.”
That’s what art means to Jai. It’s something that brings joy into people’s lives. He loves to dance and listen to music, because he likes the way it makes people happy. He doesn’t give much thought to choosing one work of art or piece of music as his favorite, but he does say that Marty McFly’s “Johnny B. Goode” guitar solo from Back to the Future just might be The One. He says he’d love to learn to play the electric guitar—just so he could play that piece like Michael J. Fox.
![Finding enough to do in her Long Lake garden isn’t difficult for Meg Cowden. She relishes the opportunity. “Gardening is a multifaceted life-giving hobby,” she says. “It provides you with the opportunity to slow down, observe [and] experience deep reverence daily, and it’s grounding.”](https://lakeminnetonkamag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Future_LKM_GardenTour_Meg_7743.jpg)
