After finishing her first semester of freshman year, Coraline Dumkrieger is ready for the next three and a half years. Since she attended a charter school for middle school, coming to a public high school was, “…a lot different,” for Coraline. The curriculum was the most difficult adjustment; she feels that there’s more work this year. Beyond that, she has had to make new friends since she’s one of the few people who came to Sahuaro from her school. She started the year not knowing a lot of people, but because she got involved early on, she made a lot of friends. “I was thinking if I never did anything, I’d probably have one or two, maybe one friend. Something I learned was getting involved will help you get more friends.”
One extracurricular activity that helped Coraline make friends is band. She marches flute in the marching band, plays the flute in concert band, and the vibraphone in the winter drumline. Her musical career started when she was six years old and learned the piano from her grandpa. In 6th grade, she saw the band during a pep assembly, and she thought, “…I want to do that,” so she joined the next year. She had to start in the intermediate band, so that year was spent teaching herself, but she enjoyed how small the class was, and how she felt, “…it’s like a little family.” High school band is a lot harder for her, but she said, “…I’m learning a lot more than I did.” She gets one-on-one help from Mr. Guzman, which is great because she didn’t get that in middle school. Coraline has always had the arts in her life; she’s been involved in dance, singing with choir, and she also plays the guitar. She plans to expand her instrumentation by learning the drumset next year.
After high school, Coraline wants to be in a band or become an ASL teacher. She started learning ASL when she was younger because of her mom, and she didn’t realize it was something she wanted to do until middle school when she took more classes. She has an appreciation for the language and thinks it’s useful to know so she can talk to more people. Next year, she’s considering starting an ASL club at Sahuaro since there are no sign language classes here. She’s gotten to sign with a choir at hockey games, and she signed Help! by The Beatles at her 8th grade promotion.
As for her next three years, she’s sticking with honors and AP classes and has her electives planned out. She’s planning to take AP World History, the only AP class offered for sophomores, and more in the future. She wants to take weight training and continue going to the gym junior year, and with the extra elective space junior year, she aspires to write for The Paper Cut.
Coraline is just starting her high school journey, learning a lot about school and herself. If she could tell her senior self something, she’d say, “…to not get too much into my head about what people think about what I do or what I say because, in the end, someone is going to think it’s funny. It’s not always going to be bad what people think, so just don’t get into your head about it, and don’t think too much into things.”
