Senior Spotlight: Avalon Hinchman
Sylvia Erdely (10-4)
What will you miss most about high school? What won’t you miss?
I think the Masterman community, I’ll miss it and I won’t miss it. It’s nice having people that I’ve known for so long, but I’m excited to branch out in college. I think I’m going to miss the Masterman building and the quirks of the Masterman community and being together with my grade because it's a really fun group.
If you could add a class to Masterman, what would it be?
I want to study anthropology in college, and I think I would want to include an anthropology class, or something along those lines, because it involves a method of critical thinking that we don’t use a lot in school in the typical courses we take. I took an anthropology course at Penn, and once I did, my method of thinking and how I perceived events in our world was completely changed. I think that would be really beneficial for everyone to learn at a younger age before they even reach college.
You run track and cross country. What has that been like during virtual school?
It’s been fun! It’s kind of just me and my best friends, honestly. It’s the senior girls and a couple of other girls, so it’s been super fun to just hang out with people. It was great when we first started because it really changed my day and my mental health because I was getting out of the house and exercising, which I hadn’t been doing for a really long time. It gave some purpose and value to my day that I felt like I was missing for a while.
Photo courtesy of Avalon Hinchman (12-2)
Do you have a favorite memory from track or cross country?
My favorite times have been the state meets. States for cross country and states for track are both super fun events, especially track because it takes place at Shippensburg in Pennsylvania. Everyone stays in the dorms there and it’s a multi-day event, and you get to watch all the other races and see all these super amazing runners.
What are you most looking forward to after graduation?
I’m looking forward to the summer, first of all. There will still be restrictions, but I think I’ll be able to see my friends, and for the first time I don’t have summer work to do at the last minute before school starts. I’m really excited to live on my own and just be independent and meet new people. It’s going to be a really steep learning curve but I’m really excited.
If you could give one piece of advice to your freshman self, what would it be?
To work hard but not stress out about the small things, like every test grade. I think I’ve grown to understand that one bad grade is not going to affect my whole high school experience, and it’s going to be ok in the end.
Imagine you’re stranded on an island. Who would you want to be stuck with?
I would probably want to be stuck with Nora Stocovaz. She’s the president of our grade and she’s my best friend. We would either work super well together and be able to figure stuff out, or not, I’m not sure, but I think it would be fun.
If you had to pick one animal to scale up to the size of a horse, what animal would you choose?
I’m trying to think of a really cute animal that wouldn’t be scary to be horse-sized. My mind just keeps going back to a koala. That’s super random, but I feel like they would be really cute as a horse-size. Or maybe a panda, they’re already pretty big, but I don’t know how much smaller than a horse they are.
Favorite cheesy joke?
My dad used to say this one to me all the time, so it’s super corny: “Why does the ocean roar? You would too if you had crabs on your bottom!”