About
River An



Peddie School 27’


As a singer, actress, writer, and visual artist, I pursue presence, precision, and emotional truth. I study structure—a song, scene, image, or sentence—and then let instinct shape the rest. I listen for what’s unsaid and try to connect quietly and with care.
Musical Theatre
Vocal Performance  
- Performer

SEPTEMBER 2023 – PRESENT

  • Lead roles: Fiona (*Shrek*), Gloria Thorpe (*Damn Yankees*); selected as lead vocalist for school events and Blair Day band.

  • Chapel/memorial soloist; Peddie Singers (10th), Treblemakers (9th); repertoire across jazz and musical theatre.

  • Actor’s Studio & private voice: control, nuance, emotional expression; performance as practice in empathy and presence.

  • Learned to prioritize connection and joy on stage; will continue voice study and pursue musical theatre in college.

Visual Storytelling 
Amphion 
Literary Art Magazine 
- Artist and Editor

SEPTEMBER 2022 – PRESENT

  • Independent study in anatomy & color; Scholastic submissions recognized (Silver Key).

  • Amphion 2024 cover artist → layout editor; curate work and mentor contributors.

  • Process: rigorous observation, iteration, and design—structure gives expression room to expand.

  • Plan to lead Amphion and apply visual–narrative strategies to independent work and critique in college.

Peddie Student DEI 
Leadership Council 
- SDEI Leader

MAY 2025 – MAY 2027

  • Liaison between DEI office and students; collaborate with affinity groups; lead community workshops.

  • Focus: moving from awareness to respectful dialogue; amplifying underheard voices.

  • Core skill: listening and facilitating to reach compassionate solutions; carry this work into college leadership and academics.


Peddie Arts Citizenship Committee
– Theater Representative

 2024 – Present

  • Represent theatre in arts programming; link performance with civic dialogue around identity, inclusion, and responsibility.

Peddie Creative Writing 
Signature Program 
- Participant

SEPTEMBER 2025 – MAY 2027

  • Two-year seminar: deep reading across literary history, research-informed original writing.

  • Junior-summer in-person program (2026); final portfolio and public capstone reading.

  • Goal: strengthen language for eloquence and efficacy across creative and academic work.

Law & Psychology Research on Juvenile Vulnerability 
– Researcher

JULY 2025 – NOVEMBER 2025


  • Completed 20-page paper: How are linguistically underdeveloped or impaired juveniles disproportionately at risk for mistreatment in the juvenile justice system?
  • Integrates psychology & law: language vulnerabilities, trauma, development × interrogation tactics and courtroom dynamics.
  • Manuscript complete; currently preparing submission to NHSJS and AJSR.
Columbia University High School Law Institute (HSLI) 
– Student Scholar

Fall 2025 – Spring 2026

  • Accepted and will join in Fall 2025; year-long courses in Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Moot Court, Saturday seminar.

  • Weekly 3-hour sessions: lectures, case readings, discussions, briefs/oral arguments—complements my juvenile-justice research.

Princeton CIEL Senior Center
Intergenerational Musical Volunteer

MARCH 2025 – PRESENT

  • Bi-monthly performances and visits; music as a bridge for memory and conversation.

  • Shifted from performing to listening; moments of healing informed my archival project of elders’ stories.

Independent Project
- Founder/Artist/Interviewer

JUNE 2025 – PRESENT

  • Interview, illustration, writing, and voice recordings to archive elders’ memories and perspectives.

  • Purpose: give voice to underheard stories; long-term aim aligned with advocacy for representation.

Peddie Varsity 
Girls Golf - Athlete

SEPTEMBER 2023 – PRESENT

  • Varsity team member; MAPL team champion (2025).

  • Built resilience, patience, and team mindset; value humor and cohesion alongside technical skill.

Languages

  • Korean (mother tongue, native fluency)

  • English (second language, native fluency)








Wrting

Research | Essays | Poems | Criticism




Poem #1 Untitled 

When your mother OR your Father taught you how to use your knuckles
  1. to cook rice,
  2. to count the amount of days in a month,
  3. to fracture bones,



you did not know how to replicate His Eastern magic, as you had yet to learn
  1. rice absorbed water 1:1 regardless of the average adult-sized first phalanx.
  2. calendars could be julian or gregorian, very un-Eastern, and that it worked even if february were a little special.
  3. you should never punch with your thumb tucked in.



You were supposed to be a big girl, you knew that, but you couldn’t help but cry, even over
  1. all three times the rice came out all wrong, so you tried to destroy the evidence, but the wrinkled flesh of your index finger, just at the tip, pointed right back at you, mocking
  2. the fact that you had to count your index finger twice to account for both july and august. there were too many months, 1.7142857 times the amount of knuckles on your balled fist, too many months until you could mother yourself, until you could learn how to leave her womb, because the host always dies twice while its parasite accepts its fate, and federal law allows guilt by association,
  3. your throbbing hand, because you still had a decade until you would be forced to take Philosophy 101, so qualia was still a foreign concept, and so was Locke’s spectrum inversion and reductio ad absurdum and pain as the biopsychosocial product of a chain reaction of nociceptors and chemical events through the thalamus, and your pride must have stung more than your palm, but you are but a trembling girl. buckled at His knees, he could have made a convincing corpse if not for his theatrics, his cry of defeat the paradigm of melodrama.



Maybe your tears blurred your vision, or your memory fails you yet again, but you think His eyes
  1. went to you before the crime scene beneath her feet, and neither of you knew where exactly you went wrong, but she pardoned you anyway, humoring your self-incrimination. she never stopped pardoning herself, which is to say she never stopped turning herself in; you wonder who she surrendered to without a mother of her own.
  2. crinkled as she peeled your fists open and smiled a little smugly like she understood time as an equation instead of a device of fate, like she folded laundry and caught up to her second-favorite soap drama before she changed your life every morning and night and day and week and month and knuckle at a time.
  3. softened when you ran to his side, and he held you very close like brass knuckles tight against your fingers, like a ribcage heavy on your heart,



but you rub your hands together on a brittle winter day and remember older, warmer ones that nestled against yours and cobble together a sort of prayer shaped like nostalgia.


© RIVER AN 2025