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Admin
Pupule

USA
4551 Posts

Posted - 06/29/2003 :  9:10:52 PM  Show Profile  Visit Admin's Homepage  Send Admin an AOL message  Send Admin an ICQ Message  Send Admin a Yahoo! Message
Here's an uplifting story. Reid and Sarah - keep an eye out for Ana in your 'hood next year.

quote:
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.



Andy

cmdrpiffle
`Olu`olu

USA
553 Posts

Posted - 06/29/2003 :  9:40:24 PM  Show Profile
How sad.

I hope Ana truly is rounded enough to thrive.

To define ones self at such an early age. I am happy she is able to attain what she so badly desires.

All hail the university system!

Mike

my Poodle is smarter than your honor student
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Pauline Leland
`Olu`olu

USA
783 Posts

Posted - 06/29/2003 :  10:46:36 PM  Show Profile
Such a determined young woman.

Piffle,
I'm missing something. Instead of focusing on getting into Yale, she should have done what?



Pauline
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cmdrpiffle
`Olu`olu

USA
553 Posts

Posted - 06/30/2003 :  12:42:22 AM  Show Profile
With all respect and love to Ana.

It's all about 'getting into Yale'

For what? Children such as Ana have an alarming rate of disappointment and dis-satisfaction when confronted by the realities of college life. Again, I hope she is well rounded. I really do.

They also have an extremely high rate of failure. They meaning individuals who have set on an institution or school, above all else.

Deciding in the early years of primary (elementary) school where you want to go to university.... is fraught with woe.

People change.

I hope she goes where her heart wants to go, and is successful.


However, I think the allure of certain 'colleges' whatever their advertising may be.... are leading more and more people to the path of failure. I've seen too many educated morons, but finely educated morons to alter my opinion.


Is it the money a degree from one of those institutions brings?

Yes it is.

Above all else.




For her, I am happy. I hope her the utmost success in life.




For the newspaper or station that prints or airs these 'human interest' stories as course. That propogate the notion that the unobtainable high priced university is the best, because it is the most expensive....That Yale is a better education than the University of Hawaii, or Arizona (where I went) because it is....well, Yale?

When we quit holding our children to the moronic standards of other peoples notions of education....we will start to progress.


imnsho :)


MIKE

my Poodle is smarter than your honor student
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Pauline Leland
`Olu`olu

USA
783 Posts

Posted - 06/30/2003 :  01:28:04 AM  Show Profile
You nobly refrained from any comment on high political office. Very commendable.

Pauline
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cpatch
Ahonui

USA
2187 Posts

Posted - 06/30/2003 :  1:32:07 PM  Show Profile  Visit cpatch's Homepage  Send cpatch an AOL message
I'm proud to be a finely educated moron. (Or a finally educated moron.)

Craig
My goal is to be able to play as well as people think I can.

Edited by - cpatch on 06/30/2003 1:33:21 PM
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Reid
Ha`aha`a

Andorra
1526 Posts

Posted - 06/30/2003 :  1:51:56 PM  Show Profile
Dear Piffle,

As a scholarship student from one the poorest of the poor families (we had neither a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of), and a former college dropout to boot (from another place) who went through Engineering and Applied Science at Yale in 3 years and later got an M. Phil. from the same place on full fellowship, let me put Yale and its students in a bit of perspective for you. I also served on the Alumni Schools Committee for some years and got some poor deserving students into Yale who went on to be successful molecular biologists, so I know something about that process, too.

First, the choice of Yale over any other school is not always about the money one can earn after graduation. Everything I have read about the schools CEO's, and other such moneymakers, went to, tells that the overwhelming majority come from midwestern and western state schools - not the Ivy League + (Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Duke, etc.). The reason everybody hears about Yale is because of the notoriety of the admittedly high percentage that go into politics, including the apppointive posts like FCC and CIA. There are a few other pockets, such as journalism - the NY Times has more than its share of Yalies. BTW, Clinton was not a Yalie - he went to the Law School and that does not qualify him. W is, and I hang my head - he got in as a legacy and got through on a "Gentleman's C".

Second, nobody ever flunks out of Yale. A very, very few leave of their own accord and even fewer are given a year or two to get their act together and then come back and graduate with a different class.

Third, the Engineering and Science Faculties have recently been given a huge (multi-billion $$) boost in funding and faculty slots. Rick Levin and the former provost, Allison Richard (now vice-chancellor of Cambridge), have put a huge emphasis on this area. Ana, as most students at Yale do, is almost certainly going there because of the faculty stars that are now on board - Yale, to the chagrin of junior faculty, *always* goes through international searches for tenured slots and gets the best people in the world who are willing to come to New Haven. There are many other departments at Yale that simply have the best people in their fields, too. Yale is a place to sit at the feet of a modern day Aristotle and learn.

You can get as good an education at Arizona or UH as many Yalies do at Yale, if you work your tail off and find the right teachers (I have been to other colleges as well as Yale and have learned well at them). I submit you just can't find the faculty stars that you can at the Ivy + schools. I would have loved to study Physics under Feynmann at Caltech, for instance. Have you ever been in classes that ended in standing ovations for the teacher, every session, every semester? I have - about 7 or 8 of them. The other thing you get from surviving and doing well at place like Yale is the certainty that you can learn anything in any time of your life, and achieve what you want - on your own. Confidence. What is that worth?

Yale is a bitch of a tough school to do well at and that gives you the confidence. You get no official help, except from your faculty mentor(s) and the workload is famously heavy. It took me a year to just to learn how to use the library. (Now, the library is rarely used in the Sciences.) Cheating (except for the notorious few pre-meds) is extremely rare at Yale because nobody thinks that anybody else in the class knows as much as they do about the subject being tested. That is another thing about Yale: with a 12 or 15 to 1 acceptance ratio, your colleagues are just the best around. And you learn lots from them outside of class, too.

Yale *is* expensive, because it is inefficient and wasteful as a business organization, especially one with a $1 billion annual budget. I could tell you volumes about that. However, it has a policy of "need-blind" admissions. Ana will get what $$ she needs to make it through. The percentage of supported students hovers about 45%. The well-to-do get soaked.

Now, I too, regret the very early childhood college prepping that seems to have been developing in the US in upper middle class families, much as in the Japanese school system. But there is no indication that Ana has done that - the article talks about joy. She also made a wise choice in avoiding the Math dept. - they do Math so pure that you wonder what it is. She will learn very advanced, but applied, math in Engineering, as I did.

There are usually about 40 kids from Hawai`i at Yale at any one time. Most from Punahou, some from Iolani and Kam. Punahou was founded by Yalie missionaries, after all, and has always been a conduit to Yale. So, 9 frosh from Hawai`i is about right.

Piffle, I often get sh*t on because I went to Yale and because people who went somewhere else think it is all about Dink Stover and money and snooty WASPS - that is why I rarely mention it. But, I am now used to it, so dump away all you want.

Reid, ES '69
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wdf
Ha`aha`a

USA
1153 Posts

Posted - 06/30/2003 :  2:31:43 PM  Show Profile
Reid sez:
quote:
She also made a wise choice in avoiding the Math dept. - they do Math so pure that you wonder what it is. She will learn very advanced, but applied, math in Engineering, as I did.

I hate to respond to this for fear of opening a real can of worms but a response is necessary.

It depends on what her objectives are. You dismiss pure mathematics as if it were frivolous. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Without the research in pure mathematics there would be very little in the way of applications. Had she chosen the Mathematics Department, she would have learned very advanced pure math as I did.

Dusty

Edited by - wdf on 06/30/2003 2:48:17 PM
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Reid
Ha`aha`a

Andorra
1526 Posts

Posted - 06/30/2003 :  2:52:42 PM  Show Profile
Not knocking pure math in general, Dusty, just Yale's dept. Pure math is certainly not frivolous, but the tiny Yale dept. can only get a handful of people to be majors, and they seem to like it that way, so they screw with your mind to weed out guys like me. I have been able to do some pure math in other places ( I have been working on Riemann's prime number conjecture lately; there is a cyclic pattern that is enticing me - with no success, of course), but those guys lost me and lots of others, too. It was, and is, just about people and how they do what they do.

Did I just get myself deeper in the doo-doo?

...Reid
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Sarah
`Olu`olu

571 Posts

Posted - 06/30/2003 :  4:03:03 PM  Show Profile
Andy, thanks for the heads-up. This is fun news, and we'll be sure to keep an eye out for her when she comes. Although, freshpersons are so busy, and overloaded with new sensory input in the collegiate environment, I don't know if she'll have time for two middle-aged haoles. Maybe I can entice her with some Hawaiian, though, if she learned some from her grandmother.

-Sarah
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wdf
Ha`aha`a

USA
1153 Posts

Posted - 06/30/2003 :  5:58:41 PM  Show Profile
quote:

Did I just get myself deeper in the doo-doo?


Naahhh I shouldn't have said anything. Its silly.

Dusty
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cpatch
Ahonui

USA
2187 Posts

Posted - 06/30/2003 :  7:09:00 PM  Show Profile  Visit cpatch's Homepage  Send cpatch an AOL message
Math lost me the moment I couldn't conform it to a physical model (which would have been freshman year in college, n-dimensional vector calculus). It wasn't just me...the class mean on the first prelim was a 10 so the instructor made it easier and regave it. The mean jumped to a 16.

Oh, and Reid...you win "Post of the Day" for mentioning Riemann's prime number conjecture and doo-doo in the same paragraph.

Craig
My goal is to be able to play as well as people think I can.

Edited by - cpatch on 06/30/2003 10:00:46 PM
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cmdrpiffle
`Olu`olu

USA
553 Posts

Posted - 06/30/2003 :  9:30:58 PM  Show Profile
Reid,

I am sorry you had to make it personal towards yoursef. What I wrote had nothing to do with you, or Yale for that matter.

I wrote about some of the problems of high school aged children being sold on going to university, of getting into college above all else.

I was not 'dissing' Yale, I couldn't care less about it. Nor do I care to read your applied credentials while writing on the subject. Your attitude reinforced my point entirely.

Again, I hope the best for Ana. I just don't think it's a cause celebre' when someone is awarded college, on whatever merit.


It's not the children. Let them go wherever and to whatever school their heart desires.

It's the adults attitudes of one-ups-menship. Of how it must be worthy or special because it is a particular school. In the real world, employers are desperate for people who can interact, and function. On a lot of levels.

Mike

my Poodle is smarter than your honor student
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Reid
Ha`aha`a

Andorra
1526 Posts

Posted - 06/30/2003 :  9:42:50 PM  Show Profile
Piffle, you lost me entirely. I can't figure out what your point was, or points were. I suppose it is my fault. None of it was personal. I know why to despise the system and the institutions as least as well as you do (lots more actually - I have seen the underside). I also know why a kid from a disadvantaged background would be jumping for joy that she made it into a primo place. Tell her and her teachers why she shouldn't.

Reid
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cpatch
Ahonui

USA
2187 Posts

Posted - 06/30/2003 :  10:03:11 PM  Show Profile  Visit cpatch's Homepage  Send cpatch an AOL message
Guys, might I ever so respectfully suggest that you move this discussion to email before it degenerates into a public flame war. At this point it's just the two of you, it has nothing to do with slack key, and quite frankly I just don't feel the aloha.

Craig
My goal is to be able to play as well as people think I can.

Edited by - cpatch on 06/30/2003 10:36:58 PM
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jlsulle
Lokahi

USA
284 Posts

Posted - 07/02/2003 :  01:03:59 AM  Show Profile  Send jlsulle a Yahoo! Message
CPatch,
I second your motion. Sulle'
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