Cal High alumna Keertana Sreekumar decided the typical educational route wasn’t for her.
At the mere age of 10, Sreekumar founded the Youth Art Committee of San Ramon, which created art for the elderly and showcased work at different events. At the time, it was the first student-led arts non-profit in the country.
The committee ultimately raised $620,000 for the Contra Costa County Youth Arts Commissioner board for art programs in the county,
“We wanted to give back to the community,” Sreekumar, now 17, said.
This was only a sign of things to come for Sreekumar, a former writer and editor for The Californian in the 2021-22 school year.
Sreekumar was able to graduate Cal as a sophomore that same year. Because of the amount of credits she completed at Diablo Valley College (DVC) during and after high school, she is now a junior at UCLA.
Cal Junior Charlotte Johnson met Sreekumar in middle school through the Youth Art Committee and the two became friends through their similar tastes in movies and art.
“She’s very excited about art and talking about art,” Johnson said. “She wants art to show something different and important. She wants the art to have purpose.”
In addition to art, Sreekumar has a passion for English, writing, and film. At the age of 16, Sreekumar worked as an English teacher assistant at the Quarry Lane school in Dublin. She recalls how great her experience was.
“I love English,” she said, “It became a big deal [that I was teaching English] at school.”
Because of her young age, Sreekumar said she connected deeply with the Quarry Lane students. She said she didn’t initially plan on sharing how old she was, but after teachers began talking about it, word spread.
“A lot of [the students] confided in me more,” Sreekumar said.
She realized that because she was similar in age to them, students identified with her more.
“I think I have 400 cards from [students] from the day I left,” Sreekumar said.
To this day, she still receives thoughtful messages from her students and students’ parents. Everyone was supporting her on her journey to UCLA.
As a current English major at UCLA, she continues to nurture her passions for English, art and film. Although she is relatively young for a junior in college, this might seem like a fairly normal course of study after learning her unique journey.
While producing projects to support her passion for film and writing, she was driven to continue her education in English, and graduated from Cal after her sophomore year.
To succeed in achieving her vision, she has had to be resilient.
Sreekumar grew up with a dissociative disorder and memory loss, which can be short or long term, and is not treatable.
“My [art] work is extremely influenced by my experiences with dissociation and memory loss,” she said.
Sreekumar sometimes doesn’t remember the process of making her art, but having the pieces helps her recall. Sreekumar began to face increasing difficulties practicing her passion due to her memory loss.
“I started losing the technical skill for art,” she said.
This motivated her to pivot her focus to writing and film.
“I was learning [English] for pure passion,” Sreekumar said.
At DVC, her creative mindset could bloom and succeed with the supportive environment there.
Her artistic talents flourished in her new school. Sreekumar got her first film residency at SFFILM at 16. A year earlier in 2021, she became the youngest winner of the Toronto Independent International Film Festival for best screenplay in for her feature script, “The California Child.”
To submit an entry, she was required to be an adult. Unfortunately, she was 15 at the time.
“I submitted saying I was a 35-year-old white man,” Sreekumar said.
Her perseverance and determination helped her achieve her goal to get into her dream school, UCLA.
At UCLA, she was recently selected to be an Aquaphor ambassador, promoting products on social media and distributing them at events and pop-ups around campus.
“Don’t be too afraid to go the atypical [educational] route,” Sreekumar said. “Give it your all and don’t [let] others’ expectations weigh on you.”
Her passion pushed her to pursue her ambitious goals despite their unconventionality.
