The High Point Legacy: Alumni Spotlight: Sabrina Waller (’11)

“Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.”—Arnold H. Glascow

My Brief Bio—

After I graduated high school, I moved up to San Francisco to attend UC Berkeley. For what, I had absolutely no idea at the time. I’ve never been the type to have a dream career, so I bounced from course to course in pursuit of something that I thought society would consider worthwhile. I quickly ditched Intro to Astrophysics for Ancient Japanese History, Classical Mythology, and seminars on twentieth century politics. I followed wherever my heart told me to go and it took me on all kinds of adventures, from helping out for a summer on a Mycenaean Bronze Age excavation in Greece to spending a semester at King’s College in London. At the end of it all, I rounded out Spring 2019 with a major in History and a double minor in Classical Civilization and Political Economy.

What was I going to do now? Where was I going to go? I could go on to graduate school for History, but I had spent my whole life in Academia. With that in mind, I began applying for jobs. After a summer of dozens of applications and plenty of sleepless nights, I was surprised to see an inquiry from Epic Systems, an electronic medical record company in Verona, Wisconsin. One trip to Wisconsin, a job offer, and a whirlwind two weeks later, I found myself completely alone in an apartment in Wisconsin, surrounded by partly-assembled flat pack furniture.

Now, a year and a half later, I have decided to do the same thing again as I was offered a position in Epic’s international office in Bristol, England. I arrived in England last week and am slowly settling into my new home for the next couple of years. I still don’t have a dream career, and who knows where the wind is going to take me next, but it should be an adventure.

My High Point Experience—

I transferred to High Point in first grade and will always hold those years dear to me. It’s where I made my first lifelong friends and first began to figure out who I was.

I would come back all throughout high school to visit the teachers who had given me such a great eight years. It always felt a bit odd to be back, but also like coming home, almost the same feeling as slipping into an old pair of sneakers – you’ve grown since you last wore them, but they’re still the coziest shoes in your closet.

Personal Observations and Reflections—

Even now while my thoughts of pursuing graduate school are on hold, history and mythology remain passions at the core of who I am. A large part of that is due to my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Richman, and my junior high history teacher, Mr.Valiulis. Such sixth-grade classics as Greek Olympics and Ancient Egyptian fashion shows imprinted history in my mind as something fun, exciting, and inherently interesting, an impression that Mr. Valiulis’s assignments, such as asking us to write an essay explaining how we would siege a castle, would continue to build. Some of my most cherished memories come from those classes and I only have my two favorite teachers, Mrs. Richman and Mr.Valiulis, to thank. I don’t think I would be who I am today without their own passion and love of their subjects.

I went to Mayfield Senior School for High School and found the transition to be seamless. I have all the teachers at High Point to thank for preparing me so well for my next step in life. The rigor of the classes, particularly in Junior High, taught me study habits and advanced material that carried me well into my high school years and beyond.