During the summer after junior year, senior Anirudh Krishnakumar picked up a challenge not many students at Cupertino High School would dare to pick up. As he was enjoying his summer he reflected on his junior year and realized that he spent a lot his time watching YouTube so he planned on setting a challenge for himself to eliminate that habit. The challenge initially was that he would not watch any YouTube till he has read 100 pages of a book a day. However, as the challenge went on, Anirudh said that it, “kind of developed into two separate challenges to see how long I could go without watching YouTube and reading 100 pages of a book a day.”

With the school course load as a senior and the addition of marching band, one could wonder how he is able to handle extra reading with all his other events. “At first I was able to reach a 100 pages a day then after that I had band so I just tried to read as many pages as I can during water breaks but sometimes, I think for a week or two, I had trouble reaching 100 pages” said Anirudh. Anirudh remained pretty constant with his goal which is quite impressive considering the amount of time marching band takes up.

Through this challenge, Anirudh has learned many interesting topics that he would not have gained from school. Said Anirudh, “I’ve learned a lot about different parts of history that you don’t really learn about in school. Also, it helped me improve my writing a little bit and learn about different philosophical ideas.”

One of Anirudh’s favorite reads from this challenge is “What Is to Be Done” by Nikolai Chernyshevsky. Said Anirudh, “If I had to pick one book it would probably be this one for its magical realism, unique writing style, cynicism, surrealism, modernity, and prominent role of women.”

Aside from taking on this 100 pages a day challenge, Anirudh is also a polyglot and is fluent in six languages. The six languages include, “English, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Catalan, and Kazakh. In my free time I have also dabbled in Portuguese, French, German, Corsican, and Piraha” said Anirudh.

He uses different apps and reads books in the native language to learn them but aside from those he has another unique way that may seem surprising. Said Anirudh, “Actually I think the biggest single source I’ve been using is Internet memes because memes are pretty relatable universally so if you can understand a meme then you can sort of make out the words and context so it’s actually pretty fun.”