Senior Spotlight:

How has being at Masterman shaped you/helped you get to this point?

This sounds cheesy but just being here and knowing the people in my grade and the having the friends I do has definitely played a large part in who I am today.

What is your biggest motivator in life?

My student athlete grind. I’m just kidding, but probably my goals and hopes for the future, whether it’s hopes for swimming, college, my career or anything else it’s that idea of what COULD be that really motivates me.

What’s the best part about being a senior so far?

Senioritis baby! Also, the power and being able to say that I am a senior all of the time, which is my new justification for everything. Being at the top of the social hierarchy is really getting to my head. Nah, I’m kidding. No, I’m not. It's definitely the power.

College Essay

They’re fighting again.

The screaming floods up the two flights of stairs and rushes through the gap between my door and the floor. It’s impossible to escape. Three zeroes, this is simple math, my mum’s voice. It’s too loud. Now the sound of sobbing and my sister screaming back something I can’t quite make out. Put your glasses on and actually try.

Math homework is always a fight in my house, but then again so is science and English and dinner and who gets the car and what to get from the supermarket and when I go to work. My family can even fight about fighting.

I can’t focus. I’ve read the same sentence in my statistics textbook four, five times now.

Now it’s silent. The eye of the hurricane. I still don’t dare to leave my bedroom, my little safe haven, because the four neon orange walls are the only things that can protect me from the fury that lurks two floors below. Statistics isn’t going to happen today, or right now at least. If only I could get out, go anywhere else to work or to the coffee shop down the street, but the battlefield is blocking my path. The silence won’t last for long though, apologies and peace treaties are short-lived in my house. Olive branches break easily under pressure.

Here it comes again. Short bursts of guerilla warfare, one scream followed by a quick retaliation, then momentary silence. Only for it to happen again minutes later.

I want to get out. I can’t.

My dreams, however, both those of day and of night, are filled with other lives, magical futures, and happy endings. I dream of becoming a doctor, performing intense and intricate surgeries, of running through a bustling emergency room. I dream of waking up in Madrid, sipping a steaming café con leche on my sunny balcony in la Madrugada before the streets truly wake up. I dream of studying with a group of friends in a hushed library, hunched over biology textbooks and dreading the impending test. I dream of fearlessly striking up a conversation in Spanish, of reading Cien Años de Soledad, of one day, standing in front of a dusty chalkboard and teaching what I love. I dream of making people smile.

Throughout my busy days I search for moments that I can keep to myself. Sometimes it’s forcing myself out of bed on a Sunday morning and heading out the coffee shop up the road, where the baristas let me hunch over my laptop nursing a large latte, and taking notes for hours on end. There the storm passes around me, strangers hurrying about their lives circle around me, but never truly touch me. I find comfort in the strangers that can never hurt me. There I sit like the little snowman in a snowglobe, as the world tries to shake me up, but all I see is the snowflakes drifting down around me. But mostly, it’s the pool that hides me from everything. I can place my head under the water, and, ironically take my first breath of fresh air. Beneath the surface, there is only me and my thoughts and the occasional passing teammate. When everything is going wrong, I can simply stick my head down and count my strokes, or I can plan the next day, occasionally I’ve even done calculus problems while swimming.

Throughout my life, I’ve learned to be able to find the peace that I need to succeed as it was always more about finding it in myself than it ever was about places to work or future dreams. I now have the ability to do what is best for myself, to do what I need to do, in order to live the way I want to.