Many high schoolers play sports or attend after school activities, but Ryland has better ideas! She’d rather bake and travel to take a break from school and to clear her mind!
Most summers, you can find Ryland at Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains; she loves to ride in her Jeep with the top down and go tubing in the fresh mountain water. During the winter, she goes downtown with friends to go ice skating. She has traveled all over the country these last two summers in her family’s RV, they have been to the Grand Canyon, The Redwood National Forest, San Francisco, Aspen, Colorado, Oregon, and many more.
Throughout her childhood Ryland stayed close to the Knoxville area but moved 15 to 20 times since then, but that doesn’t stop her from doing what she does best, baking! Ryland stated, “Baking comes easiest to me. I’ve always been interested in the baking and cooking shows when I was little and started baking when I was around nine years old. I have been working on decorating cakes lately and have made a Hamilton cake while in quarantine.” She sees her future self owning bakery but until then she plans to intern so she can learn more!
Baking comes easy to her, but what about the tough stuff? Ryland says school probably causes the most stress because “they expect us to have lives outside of school and then we have 4 teachers that give us each 2 hours of homework that night and then we’re up until after 12 but then they say to get 8+ hours of sleep but expect us to be there by 8:30 it’s ridiculous”. A healthy school and life balance doesn’t really exist to anyone, Ryland said that she tries but with this pandemic spreading she doesn’t really have a life, she spends all of her time on school, but before the pandemic she couldn’t have time with friends due to stacks of homework.
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