[ PROFILES ]
BREAK FROM SCHOOL Anna Luskin, right, and friend Elena Burton spend time together during their freshman year. says this trait encouraged her interest in journalism. While she pursued her journalism dreams, Luskin put into words her feelings of stress, uncertainty, and hesitation — feelings that most high school students shared — and broadcasted them to the Palo Alto community in her Weekly columns, which ran from the summer after her junior year to the middle of her senior year. Like other teenagers, Luskin liked to practice sports, played an instrument in the Paly band, went to football games, and worried about where she would go to college. In 2004 and 2005, Luskin wrote four columns for the Weekly, sharing insights about the college application process, expressing how demanding it could be, and what a struggle it was to satisfy everyone, including one’s parents, teachers, and, most importantly, colleges. Her sentiments are still shared among high school students today. “It makes it a lot harder to feel good about your achievements when everyone around you seems to be doing better,” Luskin wrote in 2004 during the summer afer her senior year. She told the story of meeting with her college counselor for the first time and finding out that, according to colleges, what she was doing
wasn’t enough. Even though her father had always told her she would appeal to colleges, the counselor told her a different story. Luskin worried that she would be judged by her peers if she didn’t get into a well-known, prestigious school, so she struggled to achieve a 4.0 GPA, wanting to be the perfect applicant. However, physically she couldn’t take it, getting severe headaches from the stress. Thorwaldson, the editor of the Week-
a University of California school without any journalism program. At the same time, the competitive high school atmosphere made it difficult for her to admit this. “It’s not so easy to sacrifice status and prestige in a community that values those so much,” Luskin wrote in a column on Sept. 1, 2004 in her senior year. But she came to terms with her conflicting interests nonetheless. Luskin had originally set her sights on UCLA as her first choice. But her acceptance to California Polytechnic University — father FRED LUSKIN in San Luis Obispo, a school known for ly, encouraged her not to focus on the its journalism program and well-regarded reputation of the college itself, but on the in the academic world, was the perfect reputation of the department she was in- school for her. terested in. He recommended San FranLuskin’s decision allowed her to encisco State University for its well-known joy her senior year at a time when many journalism program and Luskin took a of her peers were going through the tour. stressed-out ordeal that has become a Afterwards, according to Thorwald- ritual among Paly students. The peace she son, she told him, “I know intellectually found early on contrasted with the typical that you’re right. My brain tells me that anxiety of applying to college and decidyou’re right. But my heart wonders what ing one’s future, giving Luskin the oppormy friends will think of me if I went to tunity to have a senior year comparatively San Francisco State [University].” free of stress. Over the summer, Luskin realized As much as she dedicated her time to that she would rather go to SFSU than college and her future, Luskin still tried
“She was always interested in the psychology of what made people do things.”
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