May 12, 2023 At 11:59 AM EDT
On her LinkedIn page, Noemie Durand, a high school senior from BASIS Charter School in Washington, D.C., said the only work she's happy and willing to stay up until 1 a.m. doing is related to mental health.
Before heading off to college, Durand has already had several internships, worked with the D.C. mayor's office and started a nonprofit. She is also a competitive debater who has no problem speaking about some of the nation's most pressing issues onstage in front of strangers.
She specializes in public forum and policy debate for the Washington Urban Debate League and has participated in the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues' public debate series, I RESOLVE.
Durand started debate in seventh grade because she was "looking for an activity to do outside of school."
She competed for two years before her coach left her school and she was without organized debate for a year. During her sophomore year of high school, her school's debate program picked back up virtually amid the COVID pandemic.
"[Durand] is a very kindhearted person, extremely hardworking since I met her [as a] sophomore, [and] she's been one of the better debaters I've worked with since I started teaching here at BASIS," said Messai Yigletu, a teacher and debate coach at Durand's school. "It's kind of amazing thinking about all the things she does."
Debate has had profound impacts on both Durand's personal and academic life.
The activity, she said, helped her to express herself and see both sides of an argument.
"That helps me not only better understand their side to maybe empathize with them, but also better understand their side to create a better counterargument," she said.
In the classroom, Durand is now more confident in her ability to speak publicly and make coherent points.
"Debate has really helped me build that skill of being able to express myself the way that I want to," she said. "I've always had some stage fright and, I'm not gonna lie, I still have it, but debate has helped me get over that fear to a certain extent because I'm at least not afraid that I'm going to do badly. Debate helped me realize that I'm going to do well."
But the rigor of competitive debate is not always easy. Durand said she has faced burnout in recent years, and she's struggled to manage it while maintaining high expectations for herself.
"I have so much work from my school, from my AP classes, from all the other extracurriculars I do that sometimes it's hard to keep up with everything," she said. "I don't want to do everything mediocrely. I want to do what I can to the best extent."
To be successful debaters, Durand said students have to make the activity a priority. That's what she did for the past two years, but as a senior with college on the horizon, she decided to take a step back from competing amid the pressure to craft a perfect application.
"I think that we need to make some systemic change in the way that we think about college," she said. "I feel like we're really not prioritizing high schoolers getting enough sleep, having a social life and being able to exercise because that takes time, and we're expecting them to spend all of their time doing extracurriculars and trying to get into the best college."
Yigletu said kids who compete in debate are usually high-achieving students who are dedicated to the activity.
He said administrators don't always fully understand that debate is a huge time commitment.
"I think recognizing how much time was actually put in by these kids is something that needs to be a little more widespread," he said, adding that students chose to prioritize debate because it improves other areas of their lives, including academics.
In the wake of the COVID pandemic, conversations on mental health have escalated, especially among young people who were isolated from their support systems while missing out on milestones of adolescence.
While Durand said "it was not a great period of time," the conversations with her friends about their shared mental health struggles inspired her to take on a new advocacy role.
"I was like, this is an actual issue that we need to solve," she said. "It's about people's willingness to live, honestly."
By 2021, Durand was writing for Each Mind, a teen mental health magazine, and interning as a youth health educator teaching her peers about sexual health over social media with the Young Women's Project (YWP), a nonprofit organization that provides leadership, advocacy and development opportunities for young women in Washington, D.C.
She then began working as a mental health advocate for the YWP. Her most notable project was the Virtual Wellness Center she developed with her school's mental health counselor.
In August 2021, Durand and her friend Jean-Pierre Roberts started a nonprofit called Carna, which sells mental wellness products and information packets on mental health resources by teens for teens.
"The idea is again to make it as accessible as possible to students," she said. "As teens, we have a very unique perspective on what other teens are going through. If a teenager is going through burnout, they're not going to want to read yet another 10-page article on burnout, so we want to make it as easily digestible as possible."
But that's not all Durand is doing.
In addition to interning as a research assistant with Child Trends, a nonprofit research organization focused on improving the lives of children and youth, she sits on the Commission of Healthy Youth in School, a committee with the D.C. mayor's office that aims to improve the health, wellness and nutrition of youth in schools across the district. The commission discusses issues and possible solutions before sending a report to the mayor to advise her on actions to take.
Durand is the only student on the commission—everyone else is an adult professional in a related health industry. While the pandemic was the focus for the past few years, now mental health is taking center stage.
Yigletu said Durand has done so much to help both BASIS and the D.C. community.
"She was one of our first debaters, [an] outstanding student, outstanding advocate for mental health and just, all in all, a great person," he said.
Durand credits her participation in debate with building her confidence and eloquence in professional settings.
"A big part of it is the confidence that I learned through debate," she said. "That's really what allowed me to interact with a lot of adults. I interact with a lot of adults and so, in order to have my voice heard, I need to be able to speak and I need to be able to get my thoughts across in a way that they respect and want to hear. And so I think that debate has really helped me build the confidence to speak that way."
She adds that debate also fostered her critical thinking skills, which allow her to create "solid plans" and disagree with people in respectful ways.
Looking ahead, Durand wants to continue her advocacy work as she heads off to the University of Michigan in the fall to study psychology.
"For Carna, I think that I'm going to continue it into college," she said. "I'm definitely going to try to keep a lot of high schoolers in it, but I might turn it into, like, a club or something like that."
As she continues her academic career, Durand believes her professional and advocacy paths will intersect.
She is considering both the clinical and research side of psychology, specifically in the areas of sociology and mental health.
"When I do get into research, I'm definitely going to want to advocate for change in whatever way that comes," she said, "maybe through the government, maybe through nonprofit, I'm not sure."
