On March 30th, Tai Anthony McMillan was sitting alone in his car nervously awaiting an email from his dream school, Stanford.

He had previously visited it, and he fell in love with the aesthetics. Then, the potentially life changing email arrived; he got in. His first instinct was to start screaming with joy and run back to track practice to tell his teammates and coaches of his achievement.

To an outsider, Tai is unreachable.

He’s a phenomenal athlete, an IB diploma student, and such a captivating person.

How does he manage all of this and still have social life?

The answer for him is quite simple:

“Why not? Why not try to be the best person I can be?” says McMillan.

His family is also one of his biggest motivations.

“They’ve had lives that are more difficult and gave opportunities that he and his brothers didn’t have,”  McMillan explains.

McMillan’s motivations are similar to that of others at RHS.

As he reminisces about his high school career, he remembers his freshman year when he tried to do everything, which did not work for him, but through that he discovered his core values: balance, love, and empathy.

People may think his life is so busy and requires too much, but for him being busy is a work out. No one can start lifting 200 pounds the first time; it requires time and work to get there. Start with 25 pounds and work up from there. However, McMillan stresses that issues start to arise when people reach the extremes: too much or too little both end up being problematic.

“I have to recognize where my tipping point is, I always ask myself: is (it) making my life better? Is it going to make me happy? If not, why do it?” shared McMillan.

With balancing his workload and his social life, many of his friends are in the workload with him, so he gets to see them often. If he does not see them on a regular basis, he finds the time to reach out if they mean that much to him.

When asked about love, he responds, “Oh my gosh. I’ve learned a lot in leadership (from) DiAsio and Houston Kraft: love is such a complex word, and [then] you learn about language in IB and the complexities of languages. [For example] We use this word to express our feelings for moms and pizza. This put me at a place where I had to think about what it [love] means to me.”

For him, it means selflessness. His definition is, “Love is putting aside all of your immediate wants and thinking about what’s best for someone else.”

“Self-love is also important. Will Smith says it better: when you see someone that you love doing something that is hurting them, and you are in a position of power to change that, you’ll be extremely motivated to change that for the person that you love.”

Balance ties into this as well; there are extremes to love, and constantly putting everyone before you or vice versa also causes issues.

Lastly, but definitely not least: empathy.

“I just want you to listen to other side. Not saying my method is perfect, but if empathy is lacking, they’re [people] not willing to be open minded or seeking what the other person is feeling,” McMillan expands.

His core values are what drive him to be the best person he can be.

Tai Anthony McMillan has made his impact on Renton High School by being such an incredible person. He is now headed off to his dream school and hopefully pursuing business and economics. He is currently looking towards the company A&R to tie in his passion of music and performance.