Alexa Martinez '21: Honors Student & Student Life Specialist

Over the course of my educational experience, I’ve been to quite a few schools before Sora trying to find where I fit best. From Montessori to Catholic to public to private to hybrid and even to homeschool and dual enrollment at the local community college, it’s safe to say I’ve tried just about everything. But despite all my experience with the different programs, there have only really been two programs that have prepared me for college, and by extension the necessary skills to be an Honors student.

The first is actually going to a community college and taking college classes. Which, of course, taking college classes is going to prepare you for college classes, that’s just how it works. But that’s not always something you can do easily, and I remember it was really lonely for me. The second thing that was helpful was going to Sora. 

Many freshmen find the transition from high school to college challenging due to the unstructured schedule. In traditional high school settings, days are tightly packed with classes, while college introduces larger gaps. At Sora, I experienced a similar situation, where I created my own schedule without a predefined itinerary. This responsibility, though basic, prepared me well for college, and I faced no issues with time management or organization in my freshman year.

Something that community college didn’t have, however, were projects. There were papers, busywork, but nothing that really sparked any creative growth or challenge. To be crass, it sucked. I just wanted to do something interesting, something new, like write Shakespearean sonnets! Or make an artistic piece about childhood adversity! Both things, not quite coincidentally, were actually projects of mine during my time as a student at Sora. 

That creativity and interest follows you, as just last semester for the Honors project of my statistics class, I did a full statistical write-up of the amount of deaths per book present in Agatha Christie’s work. Maybe fictional murder mysteries aren’t for most people, but when learning about how to apply a topic (such as statistics for my major), something funky usually makes the memories stick around for quite a bit longer. I also did a similar thing the year before that for a different statistics course, a comparison between different egg-laying creatures and the amount of eggs they lay to see if it could be used to predict how many eggs dinosaurs laid! 

I love being an Honors student, and I love having the soft skills necessary to be one, not even mentioning the hard skills I also got so much practice with at Sora. I love interdisciplinary topics, and I think I can find interesting things anywhere when I really dive into topics. 

It was hard leaving Sora for college, but the experience was probably a lot less rough for me than it was for many. Both due to the fact that I got to look forward to my continued studies, and thanks to the fact I got the privilege to be Sora’s first student intern, and then eventually the first Student Life Specialist. Now I get to make an impact on kids just like me, and hopefully help them both with the soft skills and discovering their interests, and with the hard skills needed to support those interests. If I can give students that same spark that I got, which has helped me flourish through college, then I want to do it the best I can.