Finding Opportunity
A USN Malone Scholar, Carmen came here in fifth grade. USN was a noticeable change from Pleasant View Elementary School in Cheatham County, where she had received her early schooling. That had been a good start for Carmen, but her parents had other ideas for high school. Since neither had enjoyed high school, her parents wanted to ensure that Carmen found an educational home that would keep her love of learning and school alive.
University School accomplished that goal and more for Carmen. Recalling her first week here, she says, "I thought it was as much fun as summer school." Still fresh in her memory from fifth grade are the Little Rock trip and that whole curriculum preparing the students for that experience and the "Animal Kingdom" project in English, an imaginative and inter-disciplinary project.
Mr. Hubble's science class, in his first year of teaching at USN, introduced Carmen to the joys of scientific inquiry, a delight she continues to explore.
For Carmen, school at USN was a series of opportunities and introductions to new joys of learning, and she took advantage of many of them. In seventh grade, Mr. Bezaire's pre-algebra class was a revelation. "I liked math fine before, but it was the first time I'd gotten really excited." She loved working on math history projects and Fibonacci problems.
Her interest in math blossomed in high school, when in her sophomore year she and her friend and classmate Sarah Hanks founded the "Math Girls" club, helped by math teacher Cindy Crenshaw. The club grew from its original three members to more than twice that many—even a couple of boys—who attended their meetings regularly senior year. One math teacher says, "Carmen is the most energetic, positive learner I've taught in a very long time (possibly ever) and is one of the most creative, ‘think outside the box' students I have ever taught."
Carmen isn't just a "Math Girl," though. She's an award-winning artist and a pianist. Her favorite classes in high school include, in addition to the most challenging math class offered (BC Calculus), Western Civilization and AP Biology.
"I like writing research papers," she says. She particularly enjoyed her Western Civs paper on the Prayer Book Rebellion in Cornwall and her American History paper on nineteenth century polygamy and how it was viewed by the outside world. (This paper won the Robert K. Massie Award for Excellence in Historical Research.)
This summer, she was working in a neuroscience lab at Vanderbilt University, helping with work studying vision and biological clocks. "They are looking at mouse retinas to see how vision affects circadian rhythms," she says. As she began to suspect in Mr. Hubbell's class in fifth grade, she might be interested in doing something like this as a career. "Working in the lab has been really cool so far," she says.
But she hasn't made up her mind to become a scientist. Before she goes to Yale University, she is taking a year to go to Morocco with the National Security Language Initiative for Youth to learn Arabic. She'll live this year with a host family. (By enrolling in this program, Carmen follows in the footsteps of McKenzie Andrews '11 and Ali Friedman ‘10.)
"I found so many opportunities at USN," says Carmen.