Empowering Education

Q: Please tell us about where you went after Seven Arrows and what passions or pursuits you explored in middle and high school.

A: After Seven Arrows, I studied for one year at Harvard-Westlake Middle School. Afterward, I finished my middle and high school education in Bogotá, Colombia at a private institution called Colegio Los Nogales. Although hectic, I learned to embrace my multicultural spirit as a driving force for my curiosity and passions. Thus, throughout middle and high school, I explored a variety of activities ranging from Model UN, to tap dancing, school musicals, community service, singing, swim training, tutoring, creative writing competitions, school-sustainability leadership, math olympiads, physics olympiads, among others. I also pursued my quantitative and artistic interests outside of school through advanced individual courses in programming and biology and through my own hands-on innovations. For example, I pursued my passion for renewable energy systems and tap dancing by building a tap board that captures kinetic energy and produces electricity. Lastly, having moved to my home country, I found passion in spending time with my family and friends and living a balanced life.

Q: And now, what are your future plans?

A: I am off to Stanford University this fall and will be part of the graduating class of 2028. Although arriving undecided, I look forward to pursuing a Mechanical Engineering or a Material Science major, focusing on renewable energy systems. I also plan to participate in a study abroad program in France and continue my research in piezo and triboelectricity. I am excited to see where this next chapter of my life takes me. 

Q: Thinking back to your time at Seven Arrows, do you have any memories that stand out?

A: Too many memories stand out; however, one I will always cherish dearly is the triathlon and the desire it seeded in me to continue swimming and challenging myself physically. I was never a sports kid, apart from dancing, and I never thought I had any chance at achieving the podium at the sixth-grade triathlon. However, I became set on the goal and trained with gratifying determination. Not only did I attain a second spot on the podium, but I also gained something else much more valuable: I gained confidence and an encouraging drive to push myself beyond my comfort zone and approach everything I do with utmost excellence, effort, and a high spirit.

Q: How do you think your time at Seven Arrows shaped you into who you are now?

A: I never truly believed the common saying that everything happens for a reason until I started reminiscing on my elementary education and realized how much it changed me. Moving from Colombia to the United States, barely knowing any English, my seven-year-old self arrived at Seven Arrows Elementary lonely, overwhelmed, and unable to speak. Yet amidst my silence, the founding vision of creativity, exploration, and discovery that permeates the school's curriculum gave me a voice. The school taught me creative, quantitative, and corporal self-expression at a time when my English self-expression skills were minimal.

Through opportunities to sing and dance at the weekly musical gatherings, build a life-size Lego Monalisa for Social Studies, experiment with 3D printing to represent atomic structures, engage in ethical leadership and community service, investigate and portray historical characters, become obsessed with Little Bit circuitry and bot programming, learn how to surf in the marine biology unit, pursue entrepreneurship, innovate, and discover the facets of my intellectual curiosity, Seven Arrows bestowed upon me a rare gift: the opportunity to embark on the journey of intellectual introspection at such a young age. Expanding my academic and creative horizons, this school cultivated the interdisciplinary spirit that now steers my pursuits and aspirations.

Q: Was there a particular teacher or experience that left an imprint on you?

A: Ron Seagal was the teacher who left the biggest imprint on my elementary school experience. He was my advanced math teacher since the fourth grade, and I always admired him for his creative approach to interpreting and teaching math to his fellow students. I also was deeply inspired by his dedication to community service in his projects outside of school. His encouragement, engagement, kindness, curiosity, commitment, compassion, and holistic guidance became integral parts of how I found my passion for mathematics and the STEM field overall.

Q: Even if you did not go to other elementary schools, how do you think Seven Arrows differed from other schools?

A: I attended another elementary school for three years before Seven Arrows and they were drastically different. My elementary school in Colombia had a rigorous curriculum with a formulaic approach to teaching. It focused greatly on core subjects like mathematics, music, science, language, and history, and it approached them individually, following a more old-fashioned education. Seven Arrows, on the other hand, teaches by inspiring constant creativity. Its interdisciplinary and liberating approach weaves subjects into each other, inciting well-rounded students. Seven Arrows infuses its classroom education, extracurricular programs, events, and activities with a truly coherent belief in exploration, diversity, understanding, creativity, awareness, project-based learning, purpose, and community. That freedom and support that’s felt around the school inspire students to take hold of their own unique child-like wonderment and learn in the most natural possible way. In other words, the school encourages, evokes, and nourishes authenticity and youthful, fresh intellectual curiosity.

Q: Lastly, what advice can you give current Seven Arrows students and young alumni as they continue their educational journey?

A: Seven Arrows is a gift. It is a gift that opens the world for you, allows you to explore your passions, and gives you a family to feel comfortable in to do so. The school offers you so many opportunities to learn and grow as an academic and an individual, it cannot be taken for granted. Therefore, my advice would be to take it all in, and take advantage of the opportunities and the extraordinary community the school has built around them: the Kuyams, the Día de Los Muertos, the celebrations; the book fairs, the Masquerades, the labs, the innovation fairs.

There’s something so magical about the school and, looking back on it now, I realize that the magic emerges from the school’s authenticity, community-building, and its genuine representation of the human experience. The school is a family, a place to feel comfortable to rejoice, study, intellectually and artistically explore, and learn. I would tell current students to work hard and enjoy the ride. I would tell young alumni to never let that spark of hope, color, creativity, and wonderment go out, that spark that Seven Arrows infuses in all of its students. Trust me, it will make an everlasting difference in your life.