Brandon Pannell, a senior here at Sentinel, has gained much from his time in highschool. He’s been a well formulated person since I’ve met him freshman year. The other day, I was able to interview Brandon to figure how he became such a methodized human.

Brandon Pannell has always been one to stand back from what’s happening on the front lines. He waits and observes until he feels he has a grasp on what’s around him. He told me during our interview, “When I’m confronted with a situation I try my best to not react with my first thought. I try to take a second to process what is going on”. He told that he feels people’s instinctive reaction is more often than not a poor response to any situation. Something he told me he tries to live by is “First thought Wrong”

Brandon talked a lot in our interview about how taking a moment to think about how to respond to a situation and visualize the consequences of your response is especially important in today’s society. “One of the big things we see is a high number of people practicing performative allyship for social movements … I think we need to step away from other people’s opinion to cut out interference in finding what you believe”. Brandon was pushing the idea that people should be self-aware of what they believe and how they act on it. He mentioned, trying to be aware of your surroundings to better influence the decisions you make by saying “When your making a public comment, maybe don’t have it say the N-word”

Brandon Pannell has been a good friend of mine through highschool. It was great to talk to him about how he became who I know. Brandon, you’ve been a major inspiration for me throughout high school; I’m incredibly excited to see where you end up in 20 years.