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For the 10 graduates of La Jolla’s high schools recognized this year for their grade point averages, achieving top marks wasn’t about competition or drive. It was about passion, friendship and encouragement.
As the students prepare to head off to various other learning institutions this fall, they looked back on their achievements and shared advice for others aiming for the top.
The Bishop’s School
Jeffrey Wang earned the highest grade point average among this year’s graduates at The Bishop’s School in La Jolla.
(Courtesy of Jeffrey Wang)
The Bishop’s School recognizes one student for the highest academic record each year with its Harvard Cup, and Jeffrey Wang took the 2021 prize with a 4.9 GPA.
Was auditioning for Borat fun?
I had to do crazy improvisations in front of real people, such as washing my face from a toilet, using a sink as a toilet, eating the fish in an aquarium. Normally a Hollywood movie is about being glamorous but this was about looking like I didn’t care about myself – so no washing, no shaving, having dirty nails.
Tell us more about the hotly discussed scene with [Donald Trump’s lawyer] Rudy Giuliani, who gets into a compromising position with your character…
The night before I barely slept, I was so busy researching him, and in the morning I had dark circles which they had to cover up. When the time came I was shaking, it was like my heart was about to explode. But afterwards, I was extremely happy.
Every February when we celebrate Black History Month in the United States, and when we teach it in the classroom or to our youngsters at home, the perfect accompaniment to books and stories is Black music. Black music here was born out of trouble and strife, out of uplift and joy, out of resistance and survival. It has existed since the beginning of our time here in the United States and the diaspora. Black music is rooted in the continent of Africa, and it will carry us into the future.
Though Black music has taken many forms over time, changed with each generation, and been performed in many different cultures by ethnic and racially diverse artists, many of whom are not Black, there is a fundamental thread that ties it all together: Black spirituality. When I speak of spirituality, I do not mean religiosity, though many Black musicians and their music have come out of the Black church. I speak of a force that combines both the will to endure and survive with the joy of life.
Ruben Santiago-Hudson in his role as Percy Julian
This 2007 film, which is being rebroadcasted throughout February in honour of Black history month, documents the extraordinary life of Percy Julian, the grandson of a slave who became one of the first African Americans to receive a doctorate in chemistry. Julian’s story is a complex one of incredible scientific accomplishments in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles.
Julian, born in 1899 in Alabama, had no choice but to pursue his chemistry doctorate at the University of Vienna in Austria when Harvard denied him the teaching assistantship needed to earn his PhD after getting a master’s degree there in the 1920s. In Europe, which was at the time much more open-minded about race than the US, Julian he was free to truly be himself and explore his full potential as a scientist.