Makayla Niu was fourteen when she left Taiwan to attend boarding school in the United States. She arrived without family nearby, without a friend group, and without a clear sense of how to navigate a completely unfamiliar environment. A few months into her first year, she lost a childhood stuffed animal she believed she had accidentally thrown away. For three days, she woke up early and walked to the dumpsters to look for it before class. She called her parents repeatedly, but there was nothing they could do from across the world. She was too embarrassed to tell a teacher she had already searched through the trash herself. It was a small loss that became, in that moment, a larger question about whether she belonged at the school at all.
What carried her through that period were two senior prefects in her dorm, Caroline and Tonfai. Caroline spent hours with her during study hours, some nights filled with easy conversation, others spent on the floor while Makayla cried through doubts about whether boarding school had been the right decision. Tonfai guided her through dance, helping her navigate a program she initially found intimidating and staying present through projects she was too nervous to attempt alone. What Caroline and Tonfai did was not cure her homesickness. It showed her how to trust people again and prove to her that she never had to face any of it alone. That lesson is what Makayla has spent the years since trying to give to other people.
Learning to Be the Person Who Stays
By the start of her sophomore year, Makayla was one of six returning students in her dorm, surrounded by new freshmen and sophomores navigating the same disorientation she had felt a year earlier. The faculty gave the returning students more responsibility that year, and Makayla found herself in the position Caroline and Tonfai had once occupied for her. She remembers finding a younger student crying in her room right before a dorm meeting, sitting with her, and staying until she felt steady enough to walk into the room. That instance, and others like it that fall, clarified something for her: she wanted to be someone people could lean on.
That instinct led her to apply for Freshman Prefect, the most competitive leadership position at her school, reserved for seniors and determined entirely by three years of faculty observation. Nearly the entire grade, about eighty students, applied. The process took three months and included a written statement, a school-wide student survey nominating candidates as fit or unfit for the role, and a formal interview with two current prefects and every dorm head at the school. Makayla was selected and will step into the role as a senior. She describes wanting the position for a specific reason: to give incoming students the kind of steady presence she once needed and eventually found.
Representing Students Where Decisions Get Made
Since her freshman year, Makayla has also served as a Residential Life Representative, a role selected through application and interview with the student body president and vice president, for two consecutive years. The position places her in weekly meetings with the faculty who oversee residential policy, where representatives are expected to voice how proposed changes will actually affect students.
One of the clearest examples of that advocacy came when administrators considered reintroducing mandatory morning room checks partway through the school year. Several faculty members were hesitant, uncertain whether a policy shift mid-year would land well with students. Makayla and her fellow representatives disagreed. Based on conversations with their peers, they believed the change was both reasonable and worth pushing for, and they said so directly in the room. The policy was reinstated. It is a small example, but it reflects the role as Makayla has approached it: not a title to hold, but a responsibility to actually use.
Earning a Seat in a Room Built for Adults
That same persistence shaped how Makayla secured an internship at the Mayor’s Office in Tenafly, New Jersey. Finding an internship as a high schooler proved difficult. She cold-called and emailed ten different offices and organizations, following up where she could, and heard back from only two, both of which turned her down because of her age. A connection through her father eventually led to the mayor’s direct contact information. She emailed him immediately, secured a call, and spent the conversation making the case that her age should not be mistaken for a lack of capability. After two more calls, she was offered the internship. The entire process took about two weeks.
Once there, her early work was valuable. Much of it involved data entry and scanning documents, tasks that could easily read as ordinary on paper. But even that work taught her what government operations actually look like behind the scenes, knowledge that most students her age never get close to. As she built professional relationships with the staff around her, she was gradually entrusted with more substantive responsibility, eventually helping process business licensing applications that required understanding licensing requirements, reviewing submissions for completeness, and coordinating across municipal departments to keep applications moving.
Through the role, she also attended networking events connected to the Federal Enforcement Homeland Security Foundation and UN-adjacent professionals, where she learned that opportunity in that world depends as much on relationships as on technical knowledge. Several professionals she met encouraged her to reach out again the following year about future internship opportunities, a small but concrete return on hours spent introducing herself and asking questions in rooms where she was often the youngest person present.
What the Pattern Adds Up To
Makayla is candid that she has not settled on a single direction. Her exposure to municipal government this past year has deepened an interest in law and political science, though she is still working out what shape that interest will eventually take. What is already clear is the pattern underneath everything she has pursued so far: a student who arrived somewhere unfamiliar, was held up by people who did not have to help her, and has spent every year since making sure she is that person for someone else. From a dorm room in her sophomore year to a mayor’s office two states away, the throughline has not changed. She shows up, and she stays.
