UNAPOLOGE TIC Living Life for Yourself By Elena Razgonov
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hey don’t like that you decide to clash patterns as a fashion statement. Well, that’s kind of more of their taste and the fact that their deciding to verbalize that is more of a sign of their character than a representation of yours” (Pagett). In this generation it’s difficult to imagine a high school student who isn’t scrambling to sign up for AP and honors classes, who isn’t overworking themselves into submission as they bite their fingernails in anxiety as college fast approaches. Senior at Los Altos High School Pagett Pagett is the contrary. Although she admits to having been the former, Pagett has blossomed into an active entrepreneur who lives her life with passion. Pagett has already started two of her own companies, Impact Design Co and Lemmona Software, she’s come to start working at WAUW, a fashion app, and she’s a part of a number of nonprofits, including LyfeCycle, where she is the public relations officer. All the while she balances her strenuous classes at school with Model United Nations and Cheerleading. While many may be turned off by so many endeavors, to Pagett these endeavors enrich her life as she dives head first into each and everyone of them. Like any high school student, college is always in the back of Pagett’s mind as the concept of going to college has grown to be the deciding factor be-
tween success and failure. As the days pass and graduation approaches, whether or not students will get accepted to college acts as a silent motivator for students push themselves more and more. “It’s sad, but true,” says Kira Gobes, mentor to Pagett Pagett. She recalls how many of the students she comes in contact with are often driven solely by getting into college rather than personal goals and care for the community. When Pagett attended school in southern California, she was familiar with such a mindset as she and her friends would often compete to see who had the most strenuous schedule and who could maintain the best GPA. Since she has made the nearly 400 mile journey to northern California, the environment hasn’t changed much. In fact, according to her Model United Nations partner and Mountain View native Angela Chen,” Here you don’t meet a lot of people who aren’t influenced by this college stress, who aren’t influenced by: I need to get into college and I need to get into a good college. And I think a lot people get this kind of tunnel vision”(Chen). An epidemic of anxiety has struck the student body as going to college has evolved from a privilege to a necessity. Corroborating the feelings of students, Georgetown University estimates that by 2020 nearly sixty five percent of jobs will require a college education (Carnevale). That means that
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out of the 55 million jobs projected to exist in 2020, 35.8 million of them will require some sort of college education. And so, students worried for their future scramble to be able to compete for college admissions and to paraphrase Angela Chen: students apply to colleges with the caveat that there is only a handful of “good” schools you can actually go to. With the competition ramping up and the ‘sink or swim’ mentality growing ever more pervasive, students abandon camaraderie in favor of the abstract thought of success. The only way to succeed? Through cutthroat academics. For Pagett the need to compete with her peer was a key motivating factor in her becoming a part of Model United Nations as well as applying for the Virtual Enterprise at her previous school. Although, “[She] didn’t think that [she’d] get in because they made a huge speech to the entire school that was in my grade level before hand saying,’Very few people get in, you know don’t get heartbroken if you don’t make it’” (Pagett). She still applied and Virtual Enterprise became a gateway for her to discover her passions. Pagett recalls that had it not been for Virtual Enterprise she likely wouldn’t have found a worthy outlet for her passions. In the world of education VE represents a shift in the mentality of both grade level schools and college administrations who have come to believe, “Too often, to-
day’s culture sends young people messages that emphasize personal success rather than concern for others and the common good... And too often the college admissions process—a process that involves admissions office s ,
guidance counselors, parents and many other s t a ke h ol d ers—contributes to this problem” (Making Care Common Project). The goal of alternative programs such as VE (and Freestyle Academy) is to put an emphasis on the skills students develop as well as experience rather than the memorization and test taking we’re all so familiar with. The bottom line is that this new generation of education allows students to discover and explore their passions for the sake of passion and in lieu of grandeur. From a young age Pagett has been a humanitarian. As a girl scout she had the opportunity to visit a foster care facility. Seeing the other children there who had been displaced from their families and lives, she grew passionate. She felt a connection to those
children and seeing her own friends suffer within the school system bolstered her desire to do something, to create an environment,” Where they could really make their home where they could really grow and become their own self and their best and explore their interests too” (Pagett). Now Pagett works at LyfeCycle and OutBully, two nonprofits founded by youth like her. LyfeCycle is a nonprofit which aims to deliver bicycles to children in impoverished nations to allow those children to go to school when they have no other means of transportation. OutBully, launching in the fall, is an app which allows students to discreetly and even anonymously notify their schools of bullying. The only way she was able to so actively and fully engage in these nonprofits was Virtual Enterprise. VE taught her how to create a company and see it through from beginning to end. Not only that but VE opened even more opportunities to attend more programs which helped foster her growth as an entrepreneur and marketer. Pagett, however, didn’t stop there. Her passion doesn’t come from the duty she has to complete those programs, but the desire to help and enrich the lives of others anyway she can. She embodies the idea of doing something for passion’s sake, her passion just happens to be humanitarian. Anyone you ask will tell you that Sienna Pagett has a bright and broad future. And no one will deny that she had the chops to compete with even the highest achieving students at her school. The journey for Pagett to be driven by passion rather than scholastics has been long and difficult.
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Only o n April 2 7 t h 201 6 was Sienna able to openly admit that school really isn’t the be all end of of one’s life. She has realized that her passions reach far beyond textbooks and essays and her plans to carry out her passions are grand. After completing high school Pagett plans to take a gap year much like the prestigious Malia Obama who will be taking her own gap year before going to Harvard University (AndrewsDyer). Pagett admits that she’s preoccupied with her companies and that she wants to help them grow and succeed before she moves on to college and accomplishing her goals of becoming a
Unic e f ambass a d o r. Making the decision to take a year off had been just as nerve racking as it had been announcing it. While she got questioning glances from people who were appalled that she could do such a thing, she knew that she was making the right personal choice. Why stick with flat colors when you can clash patterns?
Taking life into your own hands is the newest trend, and Sienna Pagett set it.
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Works Cited Andrews-Dyer, Helena. “Malia Obama Is Going to Harvard - but Taking a Year off First.”Washington Post. The Washington Post, 1 May 2016. Web. 11 May 2016. Carnevale, Anthony P., Nicole Smith, and Jeff Strohl. “Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2020.” Recovery (n.d.): n. pag.Georgetown University. June 2013.Web. 18 Apr. 2016. Chen, Angela. Personal Interview. 23 Mar. 2016. ---. Personal Interview. 11 April. 2016. Gobes, Kira. Telephone Interview. 31 March. 2016 Making Care Common Project. Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern For Others And The Common Good Through College Admissions. Publication. Harvard University,20 Jan. 2016. PDF file. Pagett, Sienna. Personal Interview. 25 Mar. 2016. ---. Personal Interview.27 April. 2016.
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Biography Born in Kazakhstan, Elena Razgonov is an aspiring graphic designer who is currently a junior at Los Altos High School. The self taught artist was inspired by her cousin to genuinly purue a career in graphic design after seeing what the Design Media Arts program at UCLA had in store. Razgonov is passionate about design and tries to emerse herself in the concepts and applications of it as much as possible. Although she got her start using pencil and paper she has grown to love the integration of technology and art. To her design is a way to express yourself and personally affect others. She hopes to communicate this in her art and work. After college Razgonov hopes to have a fruitful, passion driven, career in the graphic design industry.