Minnetonka High School is a place where every student is pushed to be everything they can, to do everything they can, by most of the adults around them. Get good grades, be in as many clubs as you can, be well-adjusted and have a great group of friends, play a sport, do research in labs at the U of M, be a leader within the school, and so much more. Inevitably, we become the sum of our experiences, and when students are moving at light-speed doing only goal-oriented and “productive” things, they will lose the part of themselves that sees the beauty in little things: the childhood wonder when the moon and the sun meet in the morning, the love for not only pet animals, but for the box elder bug crawling across their kitchen countertop. We only see these things when we slow down, and for Max Kaung, ‘25, folding paper is how he slows down.
To say Kaung has been “doing” origami for 10 years would be an understatement – he has dived into the unexpectedly complex and interdisciplinary nature of the Japanese art form. Kaung feels that origami is well-suited for him because “well, friends have told me I’m patient, and don’t give up on things I don’t get right away.”
No kidding. Just as an example, Kaung just achieved a 10-year goal recently – The Ancient Dragon In terms of complexity, time-commitment (over 50 hours of folding), and technical difficulty, it is often considered to be a pinnacle of origami. The starting paper is around 1 meter by 1 meter, and for this project to be possible, Kaung had to make his own. A combination of tissue paper, Methyl Cellulose, and water, creates paper immune to tearing as a result of repeated creasing and folding. The origami is fulfilling – “I like doing things and creating with my hands,” Kaung said – but it has also provided valuable insight beyond just the physical folding. “It has helped me see creative and artistic problems in a more logical and systematic way, but has also helped me see concrete and analytical problems in a more creative way,” Kaung said.
These are things students miss out on when they don’t slow down. We sometimes look back on the time we spent and wish we had spent it differently. For many, slowing down is the best way for them to not regret the time they sp
