By Nabi Dressler
Executive News Editor|
Senior Keagan Anderson
1. He’s involved with theater at PHS because he’s always enjoyed performing. “Even when I was five years old, I would go up to other tables in restaurants and sing for them before my parents would drag me back to my seat,” he said.
2. In the upcoming play, “The Sparrow,” he’s going to play a basketball player and a sheriff. The play is being considered for the Illinois High School Theater Festival.
3. He’s also in choir. And speech team. Since he’s the youngest child, growing up, he’d compete with his older brothers for attention and performing became his outlet.
4. On top of all those extracurriculars, he’s a senior patrol leader of a Boy Scout troop and a four-class AP student. To manage all of that, he stays up late to do his homework and uses tactics to “work smarter instead of harder.”
5. His favorite academic class this year is creative writing because although it’s “a lot of meticulous work” and is time-consuming, it gives him freedom to write how he pleases.
6. He’s looking forward to graduating because of everything that’s on the road ahead of him, specifically college.
7. If he maintains his high grades this year and gets 4s and 5s on his AP tests, he’ll already have 48 credit hours at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. U of I is, financially, a good choice for him.
8. While U of I is his second choice, University of Chicago is his first choice; he believes it has rigorous academics and is highly intellectual. U of C also does extensive research. “I’m going to try my hardest to get in, and then I’m going to try my hardest to try to pay for it,” he said.
9. He wants to become a chemist, another reason why U of C is his #1 college choice, as it offers so many research opportunities to undergrads. Chemistry was always his strongest science; he took AP Chemistry as one of four sophomores. Through bonding with the other sophomores, he developed a love for the class. “And then I got a 5 on the AP test, so I’m like, ‘Oh! Well, seems like I’m good at this,’” he said.
10. He’s always been told to balance the work he wants to do with what’ll earn him good money; this thought is a contributing factor to his career choice. “I guess living in my car and writing poetry isn’t going to be a secure, money-gaining job, so I guess I’ll be a chemist,” he said.