2016 Grad Salute
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
VAL & SAL
FROM PAGE 2
Middleton made it challenging. He was her favorite teacher with math teacher Susan Vanni coming in a close second. “I think she really prepared me for college,” said Haidar. Middleton, she said, can be very serious and focused and very funny at times. “He had a bunch of jokes and he’d always read to us in different voices like we were third-graders but we enjoyed it,” chimed in Sydney of Middleton. “He’d just tell us weird things.” His off-the-wall comments, clarified Principal Stubbs, are designed to challenge students in their thinking and test their logic. Elness also enjoyed math and science classes with AB Biology as her favorite. “I like history, too. It’s pretty easy.” Another of her favorite teachers was Anthony Gerads, who was also her track coach. She always felt, however, that no matter the teacher “I like to push myself more than have people push me.” Stephanie was part of the track and field team as a freshman and sophomore, competing in shot put and discus throwing. “I wasn’t the best but it was a fun experience because I had never done a sport before,” she said. Both girls took a heavy load of Advanced Placement classes at CHS. Haidar had nine in her high school career and Elness had eight. When asked if the classes
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are hard, Sydney replied: “The struggle is real.” The amount of essay writing increased from three as a sophomore to 35 as a junior. “It was like a punch in the face. I had to tie myself to my desk and type all night.” Stephanie answered: “You just have to get used to it, kind of like college, like the first year you have to adjust to everything. It’s just like that once you start taking AP classes.” Headed for UCLA in the fall, Stephanie is looking forward to a different pace of life than what Ceres has offered. For one thing, classes will be huge compared to the small intimate setting she’s enjoyed at CHS and will miss. “I wanted to go somewhere far and experience a different city. I just want to have a new experience. They also have some really good majors so those two were definitely the decision factors.” The University of California, Davis, is where you’ll find Elness this fall. “I already want to change my major from bio chemistry to something called NPB, which is Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior,” said Elness. “Ultimately I want to go to medical school and become a surgeon.” Both anticipate competition for the fields they want to pursue. “Everyone wants a spot now in the medical field in general,” said Haidar. “I’ve heard that some people after they get their bachelor’s, they actually take some time off to find a job
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JEFF BENZIGER/the Courier
Sydney Elness and Stephanie Haidar took different approaches to their academics but both came out on top.
because it’s just really hard being simply accepted into the medical schools. It’s a popular thing to do so it’s going to difficult trying to get in.” Because she volunteers as a crew leader at Doctors Medical Center on Sundays, Sydney learned of one’s technician’s plight to apply to 17 schools at a cost of $10,000 in travel, only to be accepted to five of them. Like Stephanie, Sydney will miss the close-knit feel of the student-teacher relationships. At CHS she was able to just drop in
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and converse with teachers. She doesn’t expect to have that same interaction in Davis. Both Haidar and Elness are in the throes of finishing their final high school assignment: the writing of their commencement addresses. “I definitely want to get out of the safe zone because people remember it more when it’s different,” said Stephanie. “I want it to be something special and I hope people enjoy it and don’t fall asleep.” Sydney said she may “take
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some risks” in her speech, an inspiration from Grey’s Anatomy “because that’s what I’m watching while doing my homework.” She claims to enjoy multi-tasking. Principal Stubbs said she’s inspired by the fact that her two top graduating students are aspiring to the STEM (Science, technology, engineering and math) field. “Typically boys do better in those fields and girls do better in the English and humanities field,” said Stubbs. “One of the things we’ve tried to do at the school is get more females interested in those types of classes and to really have teachers maybe that are females in some of those classes and being able to recruit some of the girls in there. I think it’s neat that they’re breaking the mold a little bit.” Stubbs added that she doesn’t recall any of her students ever expressing a desire to become a geneticist like Haidar. Sydney is closing out her high school career after having set an exemplary example for her siblings, Clayton and Camryn, both who attend Ceres High. She plans to get a job this summer. Stephanie, on the other hand, will be learning how to drive a car to enable her to make the 300-mile trek home when she can. “I haven’t started driving yet but I will this summer. I’m going to work on it, I promised myself.”
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