By: Nick Smaldone
Not many people can say they’ve lived in three different countries, three continents, and four different states by the time they are fifteen. Not many people can say they spent their summer going into senior year at a lab at Harvard Medical School working towards a cure for cancer. However, WHS senior Paris Ghazi can associate her name to all of these things.
Even though she only moved here her sophomore year, she has flourished within the WHS community. She could attribute how smooth her move here went to how common she was being put in a new place and situation after previously moving five different times (from Iran, to Spain, then to America, making English her third language). But more importantly Ghazi thanked the kindness and welcoming attitude of the Westborough community. “You must be thinking that’s kind of crazy, but the truth is out of all the high schools i’ve been to and what I’ve learned from it, I think Westborough definitely has a competitive atmosphere, but if you utilise that competitive atmosphere to be something healthy it is definitely attainable,” she remarks.
Ghazi says she was surprised at how academically focused Westborough and Massachusetts were as a whole and that there are areas that could fit anyone’s interest and there is ample room for pursuing one’s passion. After being new here herself, she says how rewarding is it to see a new student make friends, and how easy it is to make friends with other new kids because they know what each other are going through. “New students always go from feeling really comfortable in the place they’re in to kind of feeling that other people are pitying them. But the truth is I think new students have really cool stories that they want to share and once they open up and cross that threshold into a more comfortable place it gets a lot easier for them.”
Long since being a new kid, entering her senior she finds it extremely helpful to never forget in the stressful search for a college that things will work out, and in a year from now she will be already settled into the next four years of her life. Another guiding principle of her college search is that to not let people tell you where to apply and follow your passion, even though it sounds cliche it is what could make the difference between an awful and awesome college experience. “I’m enjoying the college application process, I love researching places and being like ‘I could be walking this campus in a year,’ that’s a really exciting thing, or just thinking of the people I could meet, or where in the world I could be, that’s a really exciting process. It can be fun if you make it fun.”
Ghazi speaks of the importance of taking classes that interest you, and taking advantage of WHS’s variety of classes and teachers that may not be found in college, but also mixing those with advanced academics that may catch the attention of an admissions officer’s eye. However she hopes her friends aren’t too set on one school and being close minded when looking for schools, or that kids will try too hard to get into a good school during high school that they’ll miss the time to find their passion, hers of which being science.
Ghazi founded Science Olympiad when she first moved here, and is currently the vice president of Science club. She said passion is a necessity for life and without it life would be boring, and that the only reason people think school is a prison is because people don’t know their passion yet. However, once you find a teacher that you can connect with and who can show you the importance of their subject one’s passion can become much clearer.
Another passion of hers is Student Council. She has high hopes for more community service on her last year on council, and more initiative of people to make plans for new ideas that StuCo could carry through is what drives her to continuously put in hours of work. Ghazi believes initiative can be achieved through the energy and inspiration the members on council give each other. “Energy can go a long way, I think it was at Fall Conference last year was the first time I realized ‘oh my god, I’m apart of this’ because it’s awesome feeling like you’re apart of something, and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what that thing is as long as you feel like you’re empowering you or your community.”
