Senior Spotlight: Mikaela Finlay (12-1)

Milan Howell (10-

What are your activities both inside and outside of school?

Cross country, Ultimate Frisbee, Math Club, Allies and Masterman Feminist Club (MFC). I like to make jewelry for Gina MF stuff.


If you could time travel, when and where would you want to go back to?

I feel like all the time periods in history are bad. I wanna go back to the dinosaurs, live it up, see all the good things, and get eaten by a velociraptor! If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna do it doing something memorable. I wanna see if [velociraptors] have feathers. I wanna see big bird!


What are you most looking forward to about graduating?

Getting to pick classes I’m genuinely interested in and getting to go more in-depth with subjects I really enjoy learning about.

Photo courtesy of Mikaela Finlay (12-1)

Do you have any plans for the future or a bucket list of things you’d like to do?

I want to do the thing on a vacation where I’m on the back of a boat and there’s a parachute on me while I’m in the air. There’s definitely a word for it [parasailing], but I don’t know it. And I also want to see a live King Princess concert.


What do you think you’ll miss most about Masterman?

The people! Gonna miss Malena, Triona, getting to be in Philly all the time, just the community in general.


Is there anything you wish were different about your high school experience or anything you would’ve done differently?

I don’t think there’s anything I would’ve done differently. I mean, my classes are really hard this year, but the struggle, the journey–I think it’s all gonna work and it’ll be worth it.


I wish we had more stuff during our virtual junior year. The whole pandemic was just (sigh). I wish we could’ve done more where we saw each other but that’s kinda just it, that we missed a year of socialization.


How do you want to be remembered?

By high schoolers, I wanna be the cool senior who would drive people around (and I did achieve that). For the rest of my life, I don’t know, fondly? I don’t want people to think I’m mean. I don’t really care how people think of me as long as they think I’m cool.


If you could offer advice to your ninth-grade self, what would you tell them?

I would say reach out because the kids in the class of 2022 are really great. I was kinda in a bubble for freshman and sophomore year and we also missed a year of socialization because of quarantine. I would be more outgoing with more people in my grade because they’re cool.