Broadway, NYU, and musical theater come to mind when Emersyn Hunt, a sophomore at Rocklin High School (RHS), thinks of her future. Her ambitious goals are ones that she has been dreaming of her whole life.

“Growing up, my grandpa would always be playing the guitar and singing to me when I woke up, and that. I think, sparked my first love for music and singing,” she said. “From then on, every time a show would come on and people would start singing and dancing, I would just look at the TV and think, that’s what I want to do.”

Hunt made attempts to branch out by trying sports, but those attempts led her to the realization that musical theater will always be her favorite thing. “Nothing matched the love I have for performing,” she said. “I’ve always known that this is what I want to do.” From the time her passion for musical theater started up until now, she has been working hard to accomplish her goals. “Years ago, I got into this musical theater community theater, where I did my first show, and I just remember having so much fun,” she said.

Fast forward to the present, and Hunt is still performing in shows and is currently working towards her goal of attending college to study musical theater. “I have vocal teachers and dance teachers that have connections with people that work in New York with well known colleges like NYU for musical theater,” she said. Hunt is also a part of the Rocklin Community Theater where she takes a variety of classes and performs in shows, her most recent one being “Mean Girls” in which she starred as Regina George.

Above all, Hunt said her life goal is to be happy and to make other people happy. “I feel like the only way to achieve that is by doing something that I really love to do, not just something that I partly like,” she said. “I think it’s really important to give something a shot, even if it fails. Taking risks in your life is going to make you happier than playing it safe.”

Lopez, a senior at Rocklin High School, dreams of working on the big whiteboards, doing academic research, and making history in the field of mathematics.

“I was always interested in science, math, and understanding how the world works on a level that you can quantify,” Lopez said.
Though he has always had a love for mathematics, it was only more recently that he solidified his goals for his future. “I want to go to a school that has a good research program for mathematics. Stanford is my dream,” he said. “Having good math teachers has helped me solidify my goal and envision what it would be like to study and profess math.”

Lopez’s ambitions require a great deal of hard work and that is exactly what he is doing. He says, “I read books on math fields to enrich my own understanding for that pursuit.” Taking a variety of challenging AP classes has also been an important step in progressing towards his goal.

“I’ve become pretty involved in a math competition club,” Lopez said. “I’ve taken a significant role in creating a curriculum and getting us to do competitions.”

He works hard outside of the school year as well. Th

is summer, he attended the Summer Science Program where he learned about astrophysics, which requires a lot of math. In addition, due to his extensive knowledge and passion for mathematics, he has become a paid test writer for Mu Alpha Theta, a math honor society. “I reached out to the national math organization to see if I could become a competition writer for them, and they agreed,” he said.

“I find this study to be really profound,” he said. “Math is very meaningful.” He has found that not many people realize how interesting and valuable math can be, another reason he wants to study mathematics. “I want to do work in the future to kind of help bolster more public understanding of mathematics because it is an important factor in understanding the world,” he said.