David

One of David’s teachers describes him as a student “who is always asking questions to understand the how, why and the implications.” When she hasn’t received an emailed question from him in a while, she finds herself asking “if everything is ok. I look forward to his questions, as they encourage me to research and think critically to find answers to support him.”

Perhaps David’s love of questions was written in the stars. He wrote in his essay of being “fueled by child-like curiosity and a yearning to answer questions that filled my mind as a kid gazing at the stars.” Now, “driven by the relentless curiosity to understand the universe,” he says he wants to become an astrophysicist.

David also loves art and has spent a decade exploring it, including realism, pencil art, painting, animation and clothing design. There’s photography and videography, too. A member of the National Honors Society, he has excelled academically, challenging himself with multiple college-level courses. His school counselor says that he is “well-liked” and has both an “outstanding wit” and a “fervent commitment to his studies.” She says that “his easy-going attitude mixed with empathy has allowed him to make strong connections within the school community.” 

His strong connection to astronomy was front and center in his essay, which he began this way: “00:00.250. The average duration of a human blink is 0.250 seconds. In that time, the universe expands 527,250 kilometers. 15,000,000 rogue planets will be born. 15,000 stars are created. 300 stars explode. 30 Black holes formed. And our galaxy would have expanded 125 meters and traveled 250 kilometers. In a blink of an eye, the universe undergoes a staggering array of exponential changes.” 

Ms. Mota is the type of teacher that encourages you to refine your art, explore new mediums, to always have constructive criticism when interpreting art, and to understand what defines art for you. I like to think that throughout my 4 years under her, I learned an important aspect of not only being an artist but of my character as well that I feel is so enrooted in the way I look at the world, it is impossible for me to live without it; “It's good to applaud for the talent you have today, but it is necessary to criticize it in order to further refine and master it for tomorrow.”