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Reprinted from Maui News

From Molokai to Yale
Determination in and out of school pays off for Anastasha Swaba
By VALERIE MONSON

Staff Writer

KAUNAKAKAI -- Anastasha Swaba, Molokai High Class of 2003, was waiting for the big packet. Only a big packet would do. A mere envelope, she knew, would contain bad news and her dream would end.

“They said ‘If you get in, you’ll get a big packet,’” she remembered.

So when her grandfather came home from the Hoolehua Post Office after work last April and called out “Ana, you have mail from a college,” Swaba felt her young heart begin to pound as if she were taking a test and time was up. She took a deep breath, offered a final prayer and looked up to see what her grandfather was holding.

There, in his hands, was not only a big packet, but, as far as colleges go, it was the biggest packet in the land. Anastasha Marie Mahiki Oleilani Swaba, a 17-year-old Hawaiian homesteader who was schooled her whole life on Molokai, had been accepted to Yale, one of the top universities in the nation. She’s believed to be the first student from Molokai’s public schools to attend the prestigious institution.

“When I saw it was the big packet, I was excited already,” said Swaba during an interview last week at Kalana ‘Oiwi just outside Kaunakakai. “When I opened it and read the letter, I was in awe. I was just in awe. To be able to attend Yale, the school of my choice, it just shows that hard work can pay off.”

All that hard work has turned Anastasha Swaba into a Michelle Wie of the classroom with a big drive of her own: the drive to soak up every ounce of knowledge available and apply it to life around her. Since the 4th grade, Swaba has studied not out of duty or constraint, but for the utter joy of it all. When you ask her about potentially eye-glazing topics like calculus, chemistry or competing in math tournaments, she lights up like a switch has been flipped on from inside.

“Ana is the kind of student you wait your whole career to work with,” said Jeannette Kaupu, the English and drama teacher at Molokai Intermediate and High School for 33 years. “She knows she’s intelligent, she knows she has many gifts, but she’s just out here to enjoy.”

Of all the subjects, nothing thrills Swaba like mathematics and for a reason many of us probably never considered: Math = Life.

“To me, it’s something you can see,” said Swaba, who plans to major in engineering. “You use math on a daily basis. You use logic to make rational decisions in your life. The shapes in geometry and the geometric relationships are so relevant to daily life.”

Just like geometric formulas, so too, are people full of angles and relations, said Swaba. It’s all so logical.

“We are not defined only by our height and weight, but through our personality, values, family backgrounds and interpersonal relationships,” she wrote in a scholarship application to the Rotary Club of Lahaina.

Even with a mind that makes life connections between geometric points, Swaba remains as down to earth as poi. She’s one of those rare individuals who can use words like “auwe!” and “syllogism” in the same breath, and sound absolutely normal.

“She’s such a genuine person that everyone likes her,” said Dan Bennett, Swaba’s math teacher and coach of the Molokai math team. “She’s kind of a self-made person in a lot of ways.”

Swaba’s life is not the typical Ivy League tale. Raised by her working-class grandparents, she has no contact with her father (he lives on the Mainland) and only occasionally sees her mother. When Ana was born, her mother moved to Honolulu to try to find work. After two years, she felt she could take in her daughter, but, by then, Ana was attached to her grandparents and didn’t want to leave.

“It wasn’t that my grandparents tried to hold me back,” said Swaba. “They took me to Honolulu (to be turned over to her mother), but I just couldn’t be away from my grandmother for very long.”

So little Ana came back to Molokai with her grandparents, Frederic and Emily Swaba (he’s Russian and she’s Hawaiian), to live on their homestead. The little girl showed her gifts for learning early on. Even when she was too young to read, she would memorize the Dr. Seuss stories her grandmother would read to her.

From that humble beginning, Ana took off.

“I was reading 2nd-grade books in kindergarten,” she said. “In 4th grade, I started setting goals — like what college I wanted to attend.”

Even then, it was between Harvard and Yale.

Although Swaba was a whiz in the classroom, she had a tougher time at recess. As a child, she became addicted to sweets, which took an emotional toll. Young Ana was the fat kid in school and was constantly teased.

So she withdrew from people and found solace in her treasured books.

“I used my education to get away,” she said.

Finally, though, Swaba realized if she had the determination to master algebra, she could surely conquer the numbers on the scale.

“My worst year (at being teased) was 7th grade,” she said. “And my weight was really bothering me in the 9th grade. I just decided to do something about it. When I decided to lose the weight, it wasn’t to rub it in people’s faces because they had teased me. It was because I knew I had to take care of myself and take care of my health.”

Swaba took the same approach to her weight battle as she did to learning. Never one to believe in all-night cramming (“that’s just short-term, and then you forget”), neither does she take stock in crash diets.

“I didn’t really do anything unusual — I just cut down on what I ate and exercised,” she said. “I stayed away from sweets, said ‘no’ to certain things and made an attempt to walk.”

It wasn’t easy. For an entire year, Swaba said “no” to foods she loved and hit the streets.

“It was one of the hardest things for me to do,” she said. “It was so time-consuming. Why can’t you do it quickly?”

To her classmates, though, the weight seemed to fall off overnight. Swaba remembers when she came back to school after summer vacation and she was the talk of the campus. Anastasha Swaba, the shy fat girl, had dropped 100 pounds.

As the weight came off, Swaba bloomed.

During her senior year, she was elected student body president and wound up as one of two valedictorians. She was captain of the Molokai math team for two years and, during her four years as a member, the group finished in the top tier of its division, competing against smaller high schools from Oahu. When Swaba was a freshman, Molokai finished in first place.

She also served as president of the Molokai Earth Preservation Club and National Honor Society, and was treasurer for the LEO Service Club (the high school version of the Lion’s Club) for two years. She acted in plays, sang with the choir and volunteered with the Molokai Food Bank.

“She just has a willingness to try new things,” said Bennett.

David Ferguson of the Lahaina Rotary said Swaba was one of the most memorable candidates interviewed this year, partly because she interviewed her interviewers.

“When we were through questioning her, she asked each of us why we were with Rotary,” said Ferguson. “We all bared our souls to her. It was a great exchange. We all came out of there feeling so impressed with Anastasha, that she was someone who will make a difference.”

While public schools often get criticized and parents of gifted children seek out private schools for their kids, Swaba wouldn’t have had it any other way. Her grandmother had encouraged her to apply to Kamehameha Schools, but young Ana was just fine with Kualapuu Elementary and Molokai Intermediate and High.

Blessed with caring grandparents who grounded her with strong values, Swaba thinks that a student’s attitude is just as important as the curriculum.

“I believe a lot of what you get out of school is what you’re willing to put into it,” she said. “If you desire to push yourself, you’ll do anything to make your education that much more interesting.”

Yale officials couldn’t comment on the number of freshmen-to-be from Hawaii, but Swaba said it appears there are nine others — all from private schools.

She said the smaller classes at Molokai enabled her to connect with the teachers. She has special praise for Kaupu and Bennett. Other than her family, they were the first ones she told about being accepted by Yale.

“I didn’t really want to broadcast it that much,” she said. “I told Mrs. Kaupu, and she started jumping up and down. Mr. Bennett was like ‘Right on, girl!’ and then he told the whole class.”

In fact, there was a lot of jumping up and down when word got out. Some of the biggest leaps were from Swaba’s aunties, three women who all quit high school to follow their boyfriends and wound up as young mothers without an education — and no future.

“All of them were so happy for me, they were crying,” she said. “They were happy because I did something they weren’t able to do because of the choices they made that affected them later.”

But like Ana, those aunties have the family drive in their blood. Two of them went back to earn their high school equivalencies and have now gone on to college. One will graduate this year.

As for Ana, she will leave for Yale — way off in New Haven, Conn. — on Aug. 23. Her grandmother is crying already. It will be the first trip to the Mainland for Ana, the first time away from home for very long and, in a few months, the first time she’ll experience winter.

Anastasha Swaba is ready for it all — and more.

“I’ve never been in sports before, but I think I’m going to try,” she said as that switch inside her went off again, lighting up her entire face. “Yes, I think I’m going to sign up for intramurals.”

Sounds perfectly logical.

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