![In motion | From changing strategy with his teammates for water polo to changing lanes on his way home, junior Zike Yu drives home after a long day of practice and school. He glances at his navigation app, showing him the long route home he has to drive, making sure to keep his eyes focused on the road as he thinks about his assignments. “Because I have to come over here from really far away, I don’t really have time to do [extracurriculars or activities],” Yu said.](https://whshoofprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Screenshot-2025-12-05-201524.jpg)
Every school day begins the same for DOC student junior Zike Yu: he drags himself out of bed, getting ready for a 40-minute drive through morning traffic from Chino to Walnut High School.
Living in Chino, Yu went to school at Cal Aero Preserve Academy up to sixth grade, until his parents then decided to send Yu to Suzanne Middle School for seventh grade. Instead of going to Chino Hills High School, Yu now attends Walnut High School because of the greater academic opportunity and special community culture.
“My parents sent me to [Walnut Valley Unified School District (WVUSD)] because they thought it was a better school than other schools in my area,” Yu said. “I also like Walnut as a city more, too. There’s a lot more to do over here than Chino with better restaurants and better places to hang out across the city.”
To arrive on time to campus by 8:30 a.m., Yu wakes up at 6:30 a.m. and often gets an insufficient amount of sleep of around five hours on school days. Yu considers this daily tiring schedule and time consuming commute to be one of the biggest challenges of being a DOC student coming from Chino.
“I don’t get as much sleep as I normally should be getting because I have to wake up really early to make it to school on time,” Yu said. “The traffic in the morning really adds a lot of time to the commute which takes away time from me being able to do other things like resting, sleeping and homework.”
Despite the greater academic opportunity at WVUSD, Yu also finds it especially difficult to be a DOC student. On the social aspect, most students often grew up with one another and live close to Walnut, causing Yu to feel isolated when he first transferred there.
“Because I transferred to the Walnut district in seventh grade, I didn’t know anyone, which made me feel a little alienated,” Yu said. “A lot of people here have been friends since elementary school, so I had to make new friends again. I really had to build up my social skills to meet new people.”
Now that Yu has been in the district for five years, he feels satisfied with his time at Walnut and enjoys hanging out with the new people he has met and became close with. However, even after finding a lot of new and interesting friends, the long distance between them limits their ability to hang out with each other. On top of this, when they do actually hang out, junior Aaron Cho notices that Yu is often very low on energy and visibly exhausted.
“We are really close and we spend a lot of time with each other hanging out,” Cho said. “When we are hanging out together or playing video games though, you can tell that socially he gets super tired. When we are at school in the morning too, I see Zike buy coffee from the ASB shop a lot. [Outside of school], none of our hangouts are close to his house, so sometimes it gets inconvenient.”
Yu is also on the varsity boys water polo team, attending practice and games. Balancing this with his schoolwork is challenging for Yu, and he is forced to pay extra attention to his time management.
“All the schools we play against are far from my house, so I get home really late,” Yu said. “A challenge is having better time management because even after [practice], I have to spend an hour and a half a day driving from school to home.”
In the past, Yu’s parents had to wake up early and drive him to school, where they then had to pick him up later as well. However, now that Yu has his driver’s license, he is able to relieve that burden off his parents and take more responsibility for himself.
“Usually, when I went to hang out with my friends before I had my license, my parents were often unable pick me up on time or they couldn’t take me at all,” Yu said. “After I got my license, it is been way better for me and my parents.”
For Yu’s mom, Lynn Wang, seeing Yu thrive in his environment outweighs the far distance they live for his son. His good academic standing and abundant social life gives her continued reassurance about sending him to Walnut. “It is worth it because the education is better at Walnut than it is at Chino Hills, so a longer drive in the morning has to be the sacrifice,” Wang said. “I also do not have to wake up early anymore to take Zike, and he has all A’s in his classes right now, so I am satisfied.” Ω
