Interview conducted by Eileen H.
Eileen: Is it recording? It's recording! Hi, Beatrice. Welcome to your Seniors of CPS interview. How are you doing today?
Beatrice: It's been a week… it's Tuesday, somehow.
Eileen: … and tomorrow it'll be Wednesday, and soon it'll be over two more weeks! All right. So we're gonna start with a rapid-fire round. First, Gym Deck or Student Commons?
Beatrice: I don't know; I don't really hang out in either of those places...
Eileen: If you had to choose?
Beatrice: Student Commons.
Eileen: Favorite Trader Joe's snack?
Beatrice: Those, like, pretzel chips. I don't know what they're called, but they're a kind of sweet pretzel thing.
Eileen: I know what you're talking about! Okay, okay, Freshman Physics, or Asian Worlds?
Beatrice: Oh, boy, probably Asian Worlds.
Eileen: Okay, great. And lastly, my favorite one – favorite bathroom?
Beatrice: The Hill ones that are underneath Hill 20 and 22: those are nice! I'm also a huge fan of the mirrors in the girls’ bathroom –
Eileen: Yes, because you have the full body mirrors and everything. [Moment of appreciation for the girls’ bathroom mirrors in Hill.] So now we're going to go into longer questions. What's something that not a lot of people at CPS know about you? This can be a hobby, or a secret talent, or something else.
Beatrice: I played the tuba for two and a half years.
Eileen: What? No way! When was this?
Beatrice: Almost the entirety of middle school.
Eileen: Do you still have any tuba knowledge within you? You should do it for the talent show! Astound everybody with your musical prowess! [laughs] That's so cool. What's been your favorite CPS class over the four years and why?
Beatrice: Oh, oh, dear. Trying to think… looking back, it’s probably Atlantic Worlds or Latin IV. I really liked Atlantic Worlds, because I enjoyed writing the research paper. That's such a weird thing to say now, but I really enjoyed it because my paper was kind of out there. It was about the traditional model of the triangle trade only involving Europe, Africa and the Americas. [The idea of triangular trade is that] slaves went to the Americas, and they produced the raw materials that then went to Europe, that produced goods that then went to Africa to buy the slaves. But I argued that this was not actually true, and that the trade involved the whole world at that point, using specifically Indian cotton.
Eileen: Wow, that's fascinating!
Beatrice: Yeah, I was pretty happy with it. That's my favorite memory from that class. But Latin IV is just fun, because we're just chilling and talking about Aeneas and making fun of him.
Eileen: Is that the class you’re taking this year? I feel like the Latin gang is always a small cohort of really passionate, really nerdy, amazing people, and it's a great time.
Beatrice: Yeah, my class, in freshman year we were six people, and we've grown to eight.
Eileen: Okay, added two to the family! So where do you see yourself in five years?
Beatrice: Hopefully graduated college! A job?
Eileen: Any random aspirations in life?
Beatrice: I want to go to Australia and New Zealand, so I hope to go to those places. The ideal time for visiting those countries is right in the middle of school. When I graduate, that’s the first big trip that I want to go on.
Eileen: You should do that! Go see the Kiwis, go to the Lord of the Rings [Shire.] If you could give advice to your freshman year self, what would it be?
Beatrice: I sound so repetitive, but it's “talk to your teachers.” I remember it was freshman year orientation, and all the seniors were like, “Talk to your teachers!” And I was like, No, I don't need to do that. And now that I've gone through it, I'm like, “Yeah, I totally should have talked to my teachers.” They're so helpful! I remember the first time I realized it was sophomore year, and I had Dr. Witt as my English teacher. I did terribly on an English paper…it was a lot of telling and not showing. But for the next essay, I went and met with her, and then my grade jumped significantly. So that’s a really big one.
Eileen: I think so, too. I feel like the teachers are a very underutilized resource –
Beatrice: Especially by underclassmen, yeah.
Eileen: I'm glad that you're building those skills and encouraging other people to do the same! Okay, so last question: if you could say thank you to one room at CPS, what would it be?
Beatrice: I don't know… It would probably be this courtyard thing up above the Hill building, because I spend around one to two periods up here a day. It's this or the Latin Room, just because I've had class every single year in that room and it's always been fun.
Eileen: All right, thank you so much, Beatrice! Talk to you soon!
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