Laura Postigo was only about six years old when I met her for the first time. She and her family — her mother Amy is my wife’s first cousin — had stopped in Worthington for a few nights on their way from Houston to Webster, NY. Laura’s father, Dr. Luis Postigo, was opening a geriatric practice in Webster, which is located just outside Rochester.

In the blink of an eye (or so it seemed), Laura grew into a talented young woman, who plays the violin and loves to read. Earlier today, she graduated from Webster Thomas High School and will soon be heading off to the University of Vermont. A well-deserved graduation party was held in her honor yesterday at her home, which overlooks Lake Ontario. Before the festivities began, I sat down with Laura and asked her some questions about her high school days.

Clay: What are you going to miss about high school?

Laura: My friends. There are a few I’ve made over the years. Actually most of the friends I have now I didn’t make in high school but in elementary school and middle school. There are a few who’ve moved away, but because we’ve experienced the same things together, we have a close connection.

Clay: What won’t you miss about high school?

Laura: Probably all the busywork. Probably there’s some throughout life, but definitely won’t miss that after high school.

Clay: Busywork meaning homework that didn’t seem to do anything?

Laura: Yeah. Just like things that wouldn’t contribute to learning at all. Just something to make sure you’re doing something outside of school. What I didn’t like was the — I always forget this word — it’s when you say one thing but do the other, have unequal standards.  The teachers would always say our teaching hours end when school ends then they would expect us to have our free time be used for schoolwork.

Clay: Hypocritical. Is that the word?

Laura: Yeah. Hypocritical. So there’s unequal standards there. I won’t miss that.

Clay: Now what made you choose the University of Vermont over other colleges?

Laura: So many things. One of the things that stood out to me about the University of Vermont was the care they gave to their environment. Just in the cafeteria alone, in general, they did campus-wide rules to try to reduce their carbon footprint. Like saying only take as much food as you can carry because if you carry more food, you probably won’t eat it all and it will be a waste. And if you don’t finish your food and want to take it with you, you can put it in these little containers and take it home. So then when you take the container back, they wash it in these big industrial dishwashers and then it can be reused. They have a lot of steps to preserve their environment, and I think the care the school gives to their environment and surrounding areas to make sure they benefit together is like the same they will give to students. They can correlate.

Clay: What will you be studying there?

Laura: Neuroscience. I figure if spend four years learning something and majoring and spending all my time there, I’ll study something interesting.

Clay: Neuroscience.

Laura: Mm hm.

Clay: For medical school later?

Laura: Yeah.

Clay: You want to follow in your dad’s footsteps?

Laura: Mm hm.

Clay: Well, that wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Laura: I want to do some kind of job I can help my family with.

Clay: Very good. Did you apply to any other colleges besides Vermont?

Laura: Well, I always had back-up options of where I would apply, but I heard back from Vermont before I sent other applications. So I only ever applied to Vermont and I got in.

Clay: Give me an example of a back-up college.

Laura: RIT, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Nazareth College, and Otterbein, too.

Clay: Otterbein, too! Okay, now tell me about the bi-literacy seal that you got.

Laura: This was a new seal that was offered at our school this year for the first time. In order to be considered for the seal of bi-literacy, you have to have what they call high proficiency in English first before you even go to another language. So you either had to pass a few English AP tests already and have a high score like a four or five, or complete a project in English where you give a presentation in English so they can evaluate that you know English. That was the easy part.

Clay: So an oral presentation.

Laura: Yes and then on top of that you’d have to go through each source that you used for your presentation and fill out like maybe three to five pages, analyzing the source itself before you used it in your presentation and that was for each source you used and you had to use three. And that’s just for the English project. The same rules for the presentation applied for each different language project. So if you were getting the seal of bi-literacy in Spanish, you would also have to do a presentation in Spanish, completely, only in Spanish, and do the same things like analyzing each source that you turned in for the target language. And then if you were going to get a seal of bi-literacy in a language that wasn’t offered at the school then you would have to take a written exam for that that was graded by fluent speakers of the language.

Clay: So was it a choice of an oral presentation or a written one or did you have to do both?

Laura: It was just a physical presentation for Spanish, French, and German since those were the languages offered at our school. But I had friends who learned Ukrainian because their family would speak Ukrainian and they would go to a Ukrainian school, so they would take the written test. Bi-literacy actually means not just that you can understand by listening to somebody in Spanish and conversing but also that you could be able to read Spanish.

Clay: So both speaking and reading.

Laura: Yes. There was a lot of cramming with that project because at the end of the school year, a lot of tests and exams were going on at the same time, but I managed to fit it all in.

Clay: Yes. you did. So when will you head to Vermont? When does that part of your life begin?

Laura: Late August, I think.

Clay: Well, we’ll have to come up and visit you and see how you’re doing. That takes care of my questions. Good luck, Laura.

Laura: Thanks.