xoxo, IQ

What is xoxo, IQ?

xoxo, IQ is a student-led blog and literacy forum created by Isabelle Qi. It focuses on publishing creative writing pieces in the form of poetry, fantasy, satire, and more - but also providing readers of any age or academic level with writing resources aimed to help introduce new writers into the craft or help current writers with their ongoing pieces. On top of its imagination and creativity, xoxo, IQ also features a blog, the Sword & Sonnet Society, with pieces about current news such as the Olympics. However, unlike mainstream media and more serious pieces, the blog focuses on more exciting and relatable aspects of the events hoping to make the reading experience more enjoyable, laughable, and memorable and encourage readers through its lighthearted and joyous style to continue to read. For the new or versed writers and especially student writers, xoxo, IQ provides resources for their creations such as collections of inspiring and creative books, websites with writing start, but also helps writers earn more recognition and reward for their efforts. With this, links to scholarships and scholarly competitions are posted on their forum to offer a wide range of future engagement of writing to a wide range of writing styles, that of course, can be both beginner or experienced.

Meet the Founder: Isabelle Qi

Isabelle Qi is the Founder and Lead-Writer for xoxo, IQ. Isabelle founded xoxo, IQ in the hope that she could share her own creativity writing for others to readers and become inspired by, but also as a high school student herself, share her story of origin for writing to show others that writing could be an activity for anyone to get into and learn more in. While Isabelle may have been lucky with an early start, being pushed into reading and writing activities starting when she was five years old by her mother, Isabelle truly hopes to encourage people that writing can be started at any time. As a five year old, Isabelle read and write summaries on a biography of George Washington and although she may have found the text to be bland, her imaginative side got the better of her and in her free, she began writing short anecdotes to fill in the gaps of her imagination that the biography left out. In the first grade, Isabelle’s imagination would spark and her imaginative extensions from her reading of presidents and politics led her to writing a 28-page fiction imagining her experiences traveling to Washington DC. Going into high school, the books around her house also served as an emulator for her creative mindset but also helped her to expand her writing beyond the bounds of fiction as the books she read talked more about society in the fields of economics, government, science, and health. Furthermore, while at the time Isabelle had kept the writing more to herself, her friends had seen her works and became impressed by the sheer productivity and richness of her writing and soon, Isabelle was flooded with questions asking for advice. Another piece of Isabelle’s story was her discontent with other blogs that rarely extended a place for the reader in the story; instead, most were expositions on one’s life with no real application to others’ lives. While still, the stories posted on the blogs were ones that Isabelle herself was inspired by and loves to read consistently, she hoped to dedicate the more critical aspect of her work towards engaging her readers and giving them a place in her stories as well. 

xoxo, IQ became her place to not only share her writing, but give the advice that many in-general who were creatively writing would ask. While her writing is based on fictional, modern, and critical writing, the message Isabelle had hoped to spread was that anyone could start writing no matter their level and that the help they would like to get into it could be found through her and her writing. Isabelle’s blog has had thousands of interactions from over six different countries and she is consistently publishing new content for her over one-thousand followers on Instagram. As Isabelle begins the transition to college, she has no thought of letting her project go and believes that in college, she can provide more pieces for readers to enjoy that also talk about the college experience but also the law school experience, something that she hopes to pursue. Through her works, Isabelle hopes that her project will expand and reach an endless number of readers across the world.

Isabelle’s Other Roles in Leadership

Isabelle has also worked in other nonprofit and community engagement organizations as one of their co-founders. 

Her organization, Empowerment Through Education (ETE), was founded alongside her friend, Olivia. Together, the two had met through a nonprofit organization that offered tutoring services in English, reading, writing, and speaking for students in rural China. However, the two noticed a recurring theme among the students that often, students would drop out of the tutoring sessions in order to work to provide for their families. These kids would be as young as middle school students. The realization came when the pair investigated the socioeconomic status of rural Chinese communities and found out that for the most part, the communities were often heavily unprovided for and unsupported, unlike the mainstream big cities, and because of this, never could receive the proper impetus to break out of an impoverished and underdeveloped state. With no support for their education, no books, underfunded schools, and little access to the internet, the older generation never had the chance to study and break out of poverty and instead worked laborous jobs that paid barely enough to support their families. The story for their children would be exactly the same and the generational cycle continued unbound. Isabelle and Olivia realized this and instead of ignoring the fact, started ETE to provide school resources for both Chinese studies and English learning to the students. The organization has funded the supplying of over 250 books to rural China and hope that they can continue to fund raise to provide more modern devices and technologies for the students to learn from.

Isabelle is also the founder of Women in STEM Central NJ, which uniquely takes a deep interdisciplinary approach to studying STEM and supporting girls who have had the interest in the fields. At first, the club was aimed towards group learning with linguistics through fun games and puzzles, like different logic puzzles, word puzzles, and riddles. With their love for linguistics, the group expanded into different fields around the subject, mainly and most critically, computational linguistics that integrated computer science and AI technology into the study of words and language. Another important functionality of the club is the structure of operations: while Isabelle is a founder and leader of the club, she also allows for members to take initiative through teaching their passionate STEM subjects that others may not have much knowledge on. Through this interactive and intertwined community model, members constantly interact and learn off one another rather than from Isabelle herself and through member-led and host workshops, gives the chance for any students to have a higher role than simple membership. The club also features guest speakers and interviews with professors and industry experts from universities and companies such as Amazon, Facebook, UPenn, MIT, and Dartmouth to talk about their experiences in STEM. Through this organization, Isabelle hopes that anyone can be inspired to learn something new and feel confident that they have a home to explore their passion.