Nathalia Valdez’s personality can best be described as her favorite color: yellow. She’s dazzling, as well as the life of the party. Recently, Nat found out that she got a full-ride scholarship to the University of Arizona, making her tuition, dorm-housing, and books free!

This scholarship was a huge milestone in Nat’s life. She recalls herself crying at the moment she found out. “I was so happy and excited!” she says. She has big plans for her life and this is just the beginning. Nat wants to go to college and major in psychology. After becoming a therapist, she mentions that she might want to join law school and become a lawyer.

It couldn’t have been easy, Nat has worked hard and put in long hours to attain the scholarship and recalls that she had a ton of motivation around to help her out. She states that her biggest motivation was “Definitely seeing the people around me struggling, because they couldn’t afford to provide the money for college, so I just wanted to go to college and be able to do what I wanted with my life.”

When it comes to being busy, having a full schedule is no stranger to Nat. She’s in the National Honor Society (NHS), cross country captain, track, does community service, works part time, and is editor-in-chief of The Paper Cut. So what does she do when she has free time? “I’m currently watching Criminal Minds and The Office,” she laughs. Nathalia also picked up the interest of politics over the last couple years, researching and educating herself on current events. 

When giving advice to others, she tells us that working hard comes with the greatest reward. “Honestly, anyone can do it, you just need to work hard. I still had time for fun and hanging out with friends,” she states. “At the end of the day it was all okay.”

Nathalia Valdez is undeniably one of the brightest, ambitious, and wonderful students that Sahuaro has. She has shown time and time again that she can do anything she sets her mind to, not only is that inspirational, but powerful.