Trinity Christian: Margaret Anne Gunter

MarGaret aNNe GUNter

By JD McCarthy Photos Contributed By Margaret Anne Gunter

Margaret Anne Gunter has attended Trinity Christian her entire life and said she would not trade her time there for anything.

“I’m just really grateful that I had the opportunity to go here,” Gunter said. “I feel like it prepared me really well for college. It's challenging academically but it has taught me how to work hard … It’s this hidden gem.” When asked if she had a favorite memory, she could not pick one, asking instead, “Can I give three maybe?” Unsurprisingly, both of her memories involved her and her classmates, who she said she sees as siblings. The first favorite memory was in her junior year when Trinity hosted the first dance she attended. “One of the most fun events at Trinity was two years ago, when we had our first dance,” she said. “We don’t have proms or anything, but it was called Protocol. And the whole year we had to learn how to ballroom dance. We had to learn how to waltz, and foxtrot and swing dance and how to do line dances too. Protocol was a highlight. That was a whole lot of fun.”

The second memory she recalled was when her class and the grade above them went to Washington D.C. for over a week and got to see the famous monuments and toured the Smithsonian.

Gunter participated in several different clubs throughout her time at Trinity but found her calling in the music department.

She has spent the last four years as a section leader in the percussion band, played keyboard in the jazz band, sang in the choir since seventh grade and plays the harp.

Gunter plans on becoming an orchestral harpist with the ultimate goal of being a harpist in one of the United States armed forces bands.

To achieve that goal, she plans to attend the University of North Texas. She chose UNT because of its music school, great harp professor and the option to attend a large school. A great scholarship didn’t hurt either. While there, she plans to major in Harp Performance and minor in Mathematics.

lUcy PUdNer

By Hannah Lester Photo Contributed by Lucy Pudner

Lucy Pudner will graduate this year — after almost 10 –– years of homeschooling.

She began homeschooling in second grade to spend more time at home and with her mom, but kept with it all throughout high school.

“I know it’s not for everyone because [homeschooling] takes a certain amount of self-motivation, but I feel like I have learned much better in that environment and I have such a close relationship with my mom because of all the time I spent with her,” she said.

Many people look at homeschooling as a strange concept — children who end up socially unaware or lacking social skills but Pudner said that this is not the case.

“As long as they have another outlet of social interaction, there is nothing about homeschooling that makes you any different or less aware,” she said.

For Pudner — her social interaction was dance. The senior has made serious sacrifices for her dance career.

“I got serious about ballet and stuck with it,” she said. “I ended up moving to Birmingham to train with the Alabama Ballet and then signed a contract this past summer for Milwaukee Ballet and moved up here in September.”

Although she recently moved to Milwaukee for dance, Pudner lived in Auburn for 14 years, traveling back and forth to Birmingham for dance.

This is another reason homeschooling was a beneficial option for Pudner — it helped her find time for professional dancing.

“With my dance schedule being so crazy, and mostly during the day, it worked out extremely well schedule-wise,” she said.

Scheduling wasn’t the only benefit to homeschooling, however, Pudner said.

“I feel like I retained information a lot better than I would’ve in a school,” she said. “I’m also a very impressionable person, so I think being able to be myself without the influence of peer pressure was vital to developing my personality. Not to say that would be the case for everyone, though. Also with eight older siblings, I enjoyed the time alone with my mom.”

Following her graduation, Pudner said she plans to take at least one gap year to focus on her dancing.

“I did feel like I was missing out on some things sometimes,” she said. “Like high school football games, school dances or just being around my friends all the time. Overall, though, I feel that the pros outweighed the cons in my situation.”