This month's Dare to Excel student is Wright City senior AJ Simon.
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School: Wright City
Grade: Senior
High School activities: Soccer, Basketball, Spanish Club, NHS and Fellowship of Christian Athletes
Sweet or salty snacks: Sweet
Favorite school subject: Math
If you could be any age for the rest of your life, how old would you be: 18
What is a hot take you have: “I think Drake is the best rapper.”
How long have you been involved with all of your school clubs?
“I’ve been in spanish club since freshman year, NHS since the beginning of junior year and I joined FCA also at the start of freshman year.”
Which club do you enjoy the most?
“Spanish club is really fun. I have a lot of Hispanic friends that I met through spanish club.”
What’s your favorite part of spanish club?
“We are always organizing different fundraising events and it’s a lot of people that I know, so it’s really fun to interact with those people and create something good out of it.”
Do you have a fundraising effort that you were proud of?
“Me and my friend Drew worked on a 3v3 soccer tournament. We only started doing it last year and we did it again this year. We learned a lot from the first year. So the second year we did it, seeing the improvement that we made, it felt so much better.”
What else have you accomplished while being in school?
“So my brother went to Wright City and graduated like 10 years ago and he got freshman and sophomore student of the year. Then when I came here, as a freshman and sophomore I also got student of the year. Junior year, it went to someone else and now senior year, I really want to get it again just to beat him. A lot of teachers that are here now still remember him because he won homecoming king once and so he was pretty popular. It’s cool when people say they see me in him because he’s always been an idol to me.”
How did it feel to receive student of the year?
“It was really cool. Not winning it junior year was also really cool because my friend Moose won it, and I didn’t even think about me not winning it that year because it was just cool to see someone else win it.”
In your journalism class, do you have a favorite topic you like to write about?
“Not really but I managed to get lucky so far with the articles I’ve been assigned that are something I am somewhat interested in. I had a soccer article about how the season was going so far and I had a students give back to the community article.”
What have you learned through being involved with school activities?
“With it being a really small school, it’s really kind of comfortable because you basically know most people there. You see a lot of familiar faces in most classes that you’re in and it’s nice because you can talk to most people.”
Who do you most look up to?
“I got two older brothers. One of them went to the Marines and recently bought a house. He also has four dogs so it’s really funny to visit him sometimes. And then my middle brother [Jack] graduated like 10 years ago and he recently got married, so that’s probably the most fun place I’ve been to in the past year.”
Do you have anything else you want to accomplish before leaving high school?
“I take AP Gov, so I want to try to get a good score on my AP test and then just keep my grades up as best as I can.”
\What are your post-grad plans?
“I’m going to go to Missouri S&T for engineering. I’m not sure what specifics yet, just some sort of engineering because I like math and science a lot so I figured that’s the route to go.”