Stanley, Van Gelder top Class of 2016

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Valedictorian to study at Georgetown 

Three years ago, Granville business teacher Terry Wheeler approached Brooke Stanley and asked her to be on the Future Farmers of America’s farm business management team.

“He gave me this big book to study and I thought it would be super boring, but it was really interesting,” she said. “I enjoy accounting, so I decided to go into the business field.”

Before becoming a teacher, Wheeler worked in international business and he got to travel all around the world.

“I love hearing his stories,” she said.

Stanley said she likes to travel. She’s been to a few interesting places including Montreal and Myrtle Beach. Last month, Stanley traveled to Washington, D.C., three times in one week.

Georgetown-bound

After graduation next month, Stanley will study international business and finance at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., but that decision didn’t come easy.

“I didn’t even think that Georgetown was an option,” Stanley said.Brooke Stanley 1

When she applied, she was supposed to take an SAT subject test and sit down with an interviewer at the school. Neither of those requirements happened, but that didn’t mean her chances were shortened.

“I was watching the movie Miracles from Heaven in the theater with friends when my mom texted me a picture of a small envelope from Georgetown, and I was like ‘uh oh, I guess that means I didn’t get in’,” Stanley said. “Then mom opened it and said I got in! I thought she was kidding, but she wasn’t.”

Stanley said she started to jump up and down in her seat in the theater, alarming her friends and other movie-viewers around her.

“My friends were like ‘what are you doing?’ and I was like ‘I got into Georgetown!’” she said.

Stanley was also accepted at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, St. Lawrence University, Franklin & Marshall College and Seton Hall. She was wait-listed at Harvard and Pennsylvania State University, her No. 1 school.

She received scholarships from each of the schools, the Georgetown Merit Scholarship being the largest.

Upon visiting the campus, Stanley liked the school’s environment. She pointed to the student body and old buildings as her favorites.

“I am nervous to go that far from home,” she said. “I don’t know that many people down there, but I am excited to make new friends and experience new things.”

Outside of school

At Granville, Stanley kept herself busy with extracurricular activities including quiz bowl, soccer, track, math league, National Honor Society and FFA. Outside of school, she works a few days a week at Edwards Market.

The accomplishment she’s most proud of during her time at GHS is a last-minute trivia victory.

“Two years ago, at my first FFA convention, we put together a quiz bowl team, the week before the convention. We were handed an 11-page packet, front and back sided with questions all of the way down the page. They were the most random questions about FFA history, like who was the very first female president and name the four stomachs of a cow,” she said. “We memorized the entire packet on a 6-hour bus ride to convention and won first place.”

Stanley said she is excited to join the quiz bowl team at Georgetown. Other interesting clubs she may peruse include a travel club that eats at different restaurants in the D.C. area and a grilling club that cooks food on a 20-foot-long grill on campus and hosts a weekly picnic.

“I’ve heard some of the clubs are more selective than the school is,” Stanley said.

GHS will be missed

Stanley said she is going to miss a number of things when she graduates.

“I am going to miss a lot of my teachers … Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Cosey and Mr. Healy,” she said. “Mr. Wheeler is always positive and optimistic and really pushes all of us to do our best and achieve all that we can. Mr. Cosey is just a funny guy. He’s a great quiz bowl coach and he’s willing to bring us all over to compete in quiz bowl events. And Mr. Healy is always there when I am having a crisis. He is there to say ‘No, Brooke it’s all going to work out.’”

To the underclassmen

At home, Stanley said her mother played a large role in pushing her to do her best.

“My mom had confidence in me,” Stanley said. “She always told me ‘you can either slack off and be mediocre or you can try your best, do your best, and you can succeed.’”

Stanley passes similar advice on to her underclassmen. “If you’re willing to try your hardest and go the extra mile, you can always succeed no matter what,” she said.

Last thoughts

“I am excited to go and experience the world beyond Granville, but I will definitely always remember it as my home,” she said. “I am not excited to deal with D.C. traffic.”

Salutatorian to attend Ithaca College 

During her time at Granville High School, Susana Van Gelder participated in a variety of extracurricular activities including soccer, track, quiz bowl and drama club.

How she managed to balance those activities while excelling in academics to become the Class of 2016 salutatorian seems nothing short of a marvel.Suzannah Van Gelder 3

Her secret? Ending each school day with advanced gym class in the weight room.

“I go up in the weight room and get out whatever negative or positive energy I have and leave it there in the weight room,” she said.

Ithaca-bound

Van Gelder plans to study culture and communication at Ithaca College in the fall.

She would like to someday work with a non-profit or activist group. After spending half of her senior year in David Cosey’s model Organization of American States class, Van Gelder said she would like to pursue becoming an ambassador with the OAS.

“I really hadn’t thought of being an ambassador or working with the OAS until going on our Washington D.C. trip to the OAS headquarters,” she said..

It’s a running joke amongst Van Gelder, her teachers and her classmates that she is the “social justice warrior” of the school.

“I like the human rights aspect of things … bringing more social justice to places that need to work on it,” she said. “And I love other cultures, especially those in Latin America.”

Mentors

Van Gelder’s decision to attend Ithaca didn’t come easy. She was accepted to several other schools, from many of which she received scholarships. Fordham University, University of Rochester and SUNY Geneseo were also in the running.

With the help of her parents and teachers James Marsfelder and Michele Bromley, Van Gelder decided on Ithaca. Ithaca also awarded Van Gelder a scholarship worth $20,000 a year for four years.

Van Gelder said her dad is glad she chose Ithaca over Rochester because he was worried about the crime rate.

“When I looked at Ithaca, I realized that everything that Ithaca had was exactly what I wanted,” she said. “I call it the Burlington, Vermont of New York.”

Van Gelder said she fell in love with the young, liberal, artsy vibe of the school.

“It’s got the socially active environment that I wanted,” she said, mentioning the protests that were going on on campus the first time she visited the school.

What she’ll miss

Van Gelder said she is going to miss her teachers and underclassmen friends most.

“My teachers have been so supportive, not only academically, but emotionally,” she said. “Every time I thought I was going to have a mental breakdown, Mr. Marsfelder and Mrs. Bromley were always there. “I am going to miss that unconditional support.”

Advice

As for her younger friends, Van Gelder said it’s going to be hard to leave them behind. Some advice she leaves to those underclassmen: “Your happiness and your mental health are above everything else. Everyone, including myself, forgets this at some point when they have a big test or they’re worried about their average. It’s not selfish to worry about yourself first sometimes.”

Moving forward

Van Gelder said she’s more excited than nervous to graduate and begin studying at Ithaca.

“In my mind I always pictured Brooke and I standing up on that stage together,” Van Gelder said. “I am really excited to start this new chapter.”