As I reflect on my life, one of the most significant periods of my teenage years was my time as a kandi kid. Kandi refers to these bracelets made out of pony beads that are exchanged and shared at electronic concerts. My involvement with the electronic dance music community was deep, but being a part of it also meant being a kandi kid. I loved making all different types of kandi, whether it was just a one-strand bracelet or something more elaborate like a full cuff. Sometimes, I would make these really gigantic ones that were impractical and didn't make sense physically. One of the biggest bracelets I ever made had 1500 beads in it and featured an actual full-size blinky all around it. I'm still disappointed it broke, but I've continued to experiment with different types of kandi.

I even created some unconventional items out of beads. For example, I made a couple of surgical masks that I would wear out to concerts. These were not only functional but also added an extra layer of creativity to my outfits. I also designed headbands out of beads, which I still think are super cute today. On the other hand, I made an entire bathing suit out of beads once – it was a true labor of love that required precision and patience. While it wasn't something I wore outside the house, I'm incredibly proud of how it turned out. The most ridiculous item I ever made out of beads was probably a full beanie. It was so heavy, uncomfortable, and impractical, but I loved every minute of making it.

My time as a kandi kid had a profound impact on my life. Not only did it bring me creative fulfillment, but it also allowed me to connect with friends and like-minded people at concerts. I have many fond memories of trading beads with fellow fans, creating art together, and sharing in the excitement of live music. My time as a kandi kid taught me the value of community, creativity, and self-expression.

As I look back on my teenage years, another significant aspect of my life was my involvement with my faith. Growing up Catholic, I had always been deeply devoted to my church and its teachings. However, in my freshman year of high school, I discovered a new youth group that would change my life forever. Initially, it started as a fun way to meet new people and participate in activities like dancing and singing. But as I spent more time with the group, I found myself becoming increasingly involved in my faith.

I was baptized as a Catholic, but later decided to get rebaptized at my new church when I was about 15. This experience marked a significant turning point in my life, one that would shape my spiritual journey for years to come. The youth group became a source of comfort and support for me, providing a space where I could grow and learn alongside like-minded individuals. We went on many trips together, traveling to different parts of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to attend conferences and events.

However, as with any experience, my time in the youth group came to an end. I eventually fell out with my church due to a variety of reasons, including concerns about mental health and boundaries being crossed. This disappointment led me to reevaluate my relationship with organized religion and leave the church. Looking back, I'm grateful for the experiences I had during that time, but also acknowledge the difficulties and challenges that came with it.

In recent years, I've become more confident in my personal experiences and have come to appreciate the complexities of faith. While I may not be as actively practicing as I once was, I still cherish the memories and lessons learned from my youth group days. My story serves as a reminder that life is full of ups and downs, twists and turns – but it's how we navigate these challenges that truly defines us.

I want to thank Penguin Teen for sponsoring this video, which allowed me to share some aspects of my personal life with you all. I'm also grateful for the opportunity to connect with each and every one of you, sharing our love for books like "People Like Us" and "Lies You Never Told Me." The former is now in stores, while the latter is scheduled to be released next May – make sure to add them both to your reading lists! Thank you again for watching, and I'll see you soon with another video.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enHey, what's up, hello, my name is Emma and today I'm going to be sharing some things that you guys don't know about me.I feel like I do have a very open channel.I would like to think that you guys know me as a person because I do share so much of myself in my videos,butsometimes there are just things that I don't have anopportunity to talk about and I thought I would share some of those things with you guys. I do want to let you guys knowthat this video is being sponsored by Penguin Teenso thank you so much to Penguin Teen for sponsoring this video. As this whole video is based onsharing some details and spilling my secrets,Penguin has sent me two new and upcoming thrillers of theirsnamely People Like Us By Dana Mele and Lies You Never Told Me By Jennifer Donaldson.People Like Us follows a girl named Kay who has reinvented herself completely at her new private schooland it seems as if she has a perfect life until she finds the body of a dead girl. This girl has left Kay acomputer coded scavenger hunt which leads her to a lot of different suspects until Kay's actually caught in the crosshairs of theinvestigation. And while Kay's investigating this girl's death some of her own secrets that she previously held before coming to Bates Academy start to unraveland unfold and it just sounds like a really interestingthriller novel about what can happen when you hide things from yourselfand they start to come to light. And so Lies You Never Told Me firstly follows a girl named Elyse who is extremelyexcited that she got the lead role in her school's play as she always tends to be in the background.But at rehearsal she ends up falling for someone that sheshouldn't. And then we have Gabe who is in the process of trying to break up with his longtime girlfriend,but Sasha refuses to let Gabe slip through her fingers. And essentially the story is all about the consequencesthat can come from just one bad decision. People Like Usjust came out this past February and Lies You Never Told Me is hitting shelves on May 29th.So if you are someone like me that really loves reading new interesting thriller novels, I would definitely recommend putting these two on your TBRbecause I know I am super excited to read both of them.But these books about secrets and lies have definitely inspired me to take this opportunityto share a few things that you guys don't know about me yet.The first thing I thought of is that I used to play the cornet. If you don't know, a cornet is a brass instrumentvery similar to a trumpet, but it has a different build and a different tone quality. Thinking backI honestly can't remember why I chose the cornetbut I just remember my dad bringing home a cornet one day and from then I was hooked. In my school district band didn't startuntil fourth grade, but because I was so passionate about the instrumentI started taking lessons from not only the school band teacher,but also a local music school in second grade. I loved playing the cornet so much. And like not to toot my own horn--ha ha ha brass jokes, but I was actually really good at it.If there was like a first chair in elementary school, I would have been first chair of the trumpet section.Additionally, every year I participated in this sort of like musicalevaluation that New York has and probably other states where you basically perform a piece on your instrumentand then they evaluate your sight reading abilitiesand I always did well in that. And unfortunately,my cornet career was very short-lived at the end of fifth grade going into sixth grade.I got braces and I remember those first few months of me trying to play the cornetwere just a very very painful, so I just completely gave it up.I really regret that now like I know I probably would have gotten used to it over timeand I'm almost 22 nowand I still miss playing the cornet because I loved it so much so hopefully it's something that I'll pick up again in the future.Number two is that I grew up with bunnies.My family never had dogs or cats, my mom thought that my sister wouldn't put in the effort to take care of them and likehonestly, good judgment call on her part. So we ended up getting bunnies instead, and I think fourth grade my sisterand I both got our own bunnies. Hers was named Pumpkin and mine was named Dalmatianbut we only called him Dally for short because he was white and black. He had like a mustache spotand it was so cute. Unfortunately, Dally died while I was on a family vacationand me being like a stereotypical ten year old who doesn't think that they can exist without a pet,we immediately got a new rabbit who was calledPeanut.But his full name in my mind was Peanut Butter And Jelly and I just found out for my sister like a month ago thathis full name was actually Peanut Butter And Jelly Sandwich. Don't ever let me name anything.But the reason the jelly was in there is because he was like a warm brown like peanut butter.But he was a floppy eared bunny, and so at the bottom of his ears where his skin was really thinit was very veiny so it was purpley pinkish and I was likeoh, it looks like jelly. Seriously don't let me name anything ever again. But bunnies were another really big part of my life.I actually had Peanut for a very very long time all the way up until2015 when I moved out of my childhood home and our apartment wouldn't take pets.Having bunnies was just such a great experience for me, and I really have the most fond memories of having them in my life.Number three is that I played Quidditch my first semester of college. Yes, Quidditch is an actual sport.Unfortunately Quidditch ended as quickly as it started.I only got to participate for that first semesterbecause our coach had graduated that December and there was no one that was really prepared to take up the responsibilityas a leader so it just sort of fell apart which is really sad. I had the best time playing Quidditch.I'm really confident that if my team hadn't fallen apartI would have played all throughout college because I loved it that much. Because the team was so short-lived, we didn't have specificpositions, and we didn't play any games, but just practice was really exciting. It really is a full-contact sportand I hope I have the opportunity to play it more in the future.Like if your college team or somewhere near you has a Quidditch team, I'd really recommend signing up because it is just the most funI've ever had playing sports.Number four is that I used to dye my hair a lot of colors. My hair is naturally dark brown,but the first time I dyed it was in sixth grade.My hair was dyed at darker brown,but then I had these like huge chunky like bleached blonde highlights because I wanted to look like Miley Cyrusin Start All Over music video, but it just looked nothing like that. And since having the blond highlightswe just sort of kept adding more and more and more until my hair was like pretty much entirely blond. This was like2008-2009 so like colored strips of hair were in so on my underneath of my hair I dyed it purple andthat eventually faded to like blue and then green.Soon after I got sick of the blonde which like thankfully I did because it looked terrible.I went back to dark, so I dyed my hair like brown or black. I can't fully remember,it's just been so many colors of hair. It was either brown to black or black to brownI'm not really sure but in high school, again I got sick of it.I felt like I needed more so I ended up dying it red. I actually really liked my hair completely red,but again it was just really hard to keep up with so I ended up going back to black.Then at some point I made my mom sit outside with me for like four hours to dye my whole head black againand then we bleached the tips of my hair and the tips of my side bangsand we dyed them like firetruck red.And then unfortunately like the day after we dyed my hair red and put all that work into itI went to a water park and the red immediately turned orange.It's just been such a mess of different hair colors that I can't even keep track of them all so I'll like have a bunch ofrandom pictures.I have no idea when they happened. At some point my hair was brown with red highlightsand then I dyed it black and I had green underneathand then I went through a couple more spells of black to brown to red and now we're sort of in the middle of likebrown to black because I accidentally dyed it too black this time.Number 5 is although I've talked about my sister on my channel before I'm actually one of three. This might get a little sad forsome of you. Before I was born and I believe1988 my mom actually had her first child who was a boy. The day before her due date,she had experienced some bleeding so she went to the hospital, and they checked everything out. Her baby was fine.So they sent her home and the next day she came back because it had gotten worseand he had unfortunately lost 40% of his blood.They performed an emergency C-section and unfortunately Richie which was his name was born with a lot of health complications.His organs just were not workinghe was pretty much brain-dead, and he unfortunately passed away after only 19 days of life. So my sisterand I never knew my brother because he obviously came before our timebut we've grown up in a household where we really celebrated of Richie's lifeand he's just been a present person in my life even though I never got the chance to meet him. So althoughit's terribly sad that I have actually had another sibling that I never got to meet I do feel like me and Richie probably wouldhave had a really nice sister-brother relationship if we got the chance to meet. Number 6 isdefinitely one that I have mentioned on this channel before and I know most of you know thisbut I used to make music videos on YouTube.From like 2008 to like 2012 there was this huge YouTube community of people whomyself included would set up their camera andbasically lip-sync and dance around and pose to different songs and music and filters and called it a music video.I made music videos from about 2008 to 2013 and againit was just a really huge part of my life in middle school and high school.I had a lot of friends that did it so we got to make collabsand we just like talked about it all the timeand it was the most fun. A lot of people that I met or seen on the internetused to be a part of this community look back on itand they totally cringe and they think it's like the worst thing ever and while Idefinitely have my cringe-worthy moments and there are videos that I wish I could erase from my mindeven if they're erased from the internet,I'm genuinely proud of these videos. It took a lot of time and effort and skill to make those videos and everything I've learned aboutproducing YouTube videos and editing videos has come from that time in my life. Some might be super embarrassingbut overall I had such a fun time making those videosandI'll never regret it. But as a note because I know a lot of people are going to ask these have all beenprivated off of YouTube, so you unfortunately cannot watch them.Number 7: I was very involved inphotography in high school. My love for photography started in middle school when my friends and I had all gottenpoint-and-shoot cameras because unfortunately we didn't have iPhones at the time, so nobody's phone had a good enough cameraso we had to get actual cameras.But we would just like walk around town and take photos of anything and everything and that developed into me taking photography classesfor the last three years of high school.Photography was just another huge passion of my life. I really loved itI actually almost went to school to become a photographer because I just loved it so much and at the timeI couldn't see myself doing anything else. I consider myself to have been fairly accomplished with photography in high school.I won quite a few competitions and awards, and I had my photos presented at different gallerieswhether it was something that was related to these schoolsor if it was just at a student gathering presentation. During my first year of photography,I actually won a golden key at the Scholastic Artand Writing competition which is like a very prestigious awardthat is like the highest level that you could get. And it's actually one of my least favorite photo I've ever taken.I literally made this photo so that I could get reblogs on Tumblr,but I posted to my school Flickr accountand my photo teacher was just like so obsessed with it that she submitted it without me knowing and then before I knew it Iwas having my work showed at Carnegie Hall. Very cool, but also very weird. And during my last year of high schoolI took AP photography which I actually got a 5 on myconcentration which is again the highest that you could get and I was really proud of that too.But photography was like a seriously huge part of my life at one pointand I'm so grateful for all that it's done for me in terms of my creativity and my development as a person.Number 8: I mentioned this before that my favorite music genre is electronic music and in high schoolI was very deeply involved with the electronic dance music community, but as a part of thatI was a kandi kid. If you don't know what kandi is---k--a-n-d-irefers to these bracelets made out of pony beads that areexchanged and shared at electronic concerts. My kandi kid days were just another really creative period of my life.I loved making all different types of kandi whether it was just a one strand bracelet, whether it was a full cuff.I would sometimes make these really gigantic ones that stuck out from all different areas that just likephysically don't make sense. One of the biggest braceletsI ever made had like 1500 beads in it and it had an actual full size blinky all around it.I'm so disappointed it broke. But then it developed into making even more things.I made a couple of different surgical masks that I would actually wear out to different concerts.I made headbands out of beadswhich I honestly would still wear today because I think they're super cute.I even made an entire bathing suit out of beads once.I never wore this one out of my house,but it is one of my proudest creations because it was such a pain to fit to me perfectlybut I'm still super proud of it. And the most ridiculously unconventional itemI ever made out of beads was a full beanie. It was so heavy, so uncomfortable and so impractical,but it was awesome in my opinionand I still love the fact that I have it. My kandi days were so good.It was super relaxing and therapeutic for me to make and I have the fondest memories making pieces,making them for my friends, trading them at concerts and stuffand it was an all-around really great time in my life. And number 10, the final thingI wanted to talk about is that I used to be very very religious.I don't really talk about religion on my channel unless it is in relation to one of the books that I am reading.But I was raised Catholic and then in my freshman year of high schoolI made a few friends that were involved in a local youth group and I ended up joining them. It honestly just started out asa fun place to hang out with new friends.You know we would dance and sing every week, and we had cool prizes and we played games.But the more time I spent there the more I actually got deeply involved in my faithand it completely consumed my life in a really positive way. As I was baptized as a CatholicI made the decision to get rebaptized at my new church when I was about 15and that was a really exciting time for me. I ended up going on a lot of trips with my youth group.We would travel to different parts of New York, PennsylvaniaNew Jersey to go to youth conventions with other people our age that were just as passionate about their faithand those are probably some of the greatest memories I have from high school. Unfortunately a couple of years later,I sort of fell out with my church.It was for a wide variety of reasonsanywhere from my mental health to some boundaries being crossed. I ended up leaving my churchand it left me very resentful of like organized religion for a very long time.But over the yearsI've become much more confident in my personal experiences and althoughI am not as actively practicing as I used to, I still have so many great memoriesattached to my youth group and the people that I spent all of my time growing in my faith with andalthough like you know it didn't necessarily turn out the best in the end I'm really grateful for the experiencesI had and I wouldn't trade them for anything.So that really concludes my video on some things that you guys may not have known about me. Like I said there were a couplethat I've definitelymentioned on this channel before but I hope I threw a few curveballs in to get you guys to know a few new things aboutme. Definitely let me know in the comments below what is one thing that I probably don't know about you guys?I love having discussions about some of our favorite books in the comments. but some of the onesI love the most are hearing about you guys and your personal lives.So whether you want to tell me one thing or your life story I'm totally down to read it.Thank you again to Penguin Teen for sponsoring this video and those of you watching do not forgetabout People Like Us and Lies You Never Told Me which this one is in stores nowand this one is coming out this May so make sure you put them both on your TBRs.But that is it for this video, thank you guys so much for watching, and I'll see you soon for a new one. Bye!{Outro}\n"