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Trading in a permit for a diploma


Article by Syd Charvat, as published in The Rock newspaper

Throughout high school, students spend hours pouring over their textbooks to find the answer to a discussion question, scavenging across search engines for Sparknotes, and flipping through the pages of their chicken scratch notebooks, all in the hopes of seeing a hard earned letter “A” on their report card. However, some students, like Rock Canyon High School (RCHS) senior, Kevia Qu, don’t stop there. Qu works as hard as she possibly can all the way to the finish line, in hopes of seeing her name printed on the honor roll list, or the graduation program.

“Finding out isn’t something that comes about in a day – it’s sort of like that you know where you are for the past couple of years and you just ‘stay there’,” Qu said. “So, when I ‘stayed there’ my junior year I was happy to see that all of my work paid off in my classes; almost like I did some sort of physical number or something.”

Qu has been selected as the RCHS valedictorian for the class of 2012, but although she possesses many of the qualities one would expect of a valedictorian; driven, intelligent, and conscientious, many of her classmates do not know that she wasn’t even legally old enough to drive when she received the nomination.

“When I was little, back in elementary school, I skipped first grade. Then when I entered middle school, I skipped sixth grade,” Qu said. “As a little kid, I knew that I didn’t really like my classes because I had already learned some of the material by myself, so my parents suggested that I just skip a grade so that I could take harder classes. That was part of the motivation both times, but it was also because I think they wanted to challenge me and push my limits.”

As time progressed, Qu began to notice the age difference between her and her peers less and less. However, now even at the age of 16, she notes that the “age card” seems to crop up in conversation. “I think that I’m more or less fine with it now. I think it’s just that when the concept of driving comes up, people always say things like ‘oh do you have your license?’ or ‘oh, you only have your permit, that’s so lame’,” Qu said.

But regardless of her age, Qu has constantly pushed herself in academics. Buy the end of her senior year she will have completed 12 AP credits and finish with a cumulative GPA of 4.3. And although she acknowledges that four years of college level courses didn’t come without a great deal of stress and difficulty, she also notes that had she not taken them, she might not have known what career path to choose.

After finding her passion in science, Qu applied to a variety of colleges and universities in hopes of finding a science program that suited her and would help to foster her passion. Finally, at the beginning of March she found out that she had been accepted to Cornell University in New York where she hopes to attend in the fall with a major in biomedical/biochemical engineering.

According to Qu, in the end, although grades play an important role in paving the way for your future, what you get out of the class is far more important than what you see on a progress report. “It’s just numbers, but ultimately, I think that taking the classes have much more worth than the realization of ‘oh, hey, I got an A in the class’.”

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