Nick Goudarzi – Fun and Education

Nick Goudarzi is currently a Junior, having begun his education at Saint John’s elementary school. Nick has been a long-standing member of the schools’ soccer teams, and consistently achieves high honor roll in his academics. Nick equally, at his core, is a fun-loving individual who always seeks to have a good time and share the experience with others. He provided some insight on a wide variety of topics, including school issues, memories, and aspirations.

Nick shared his love for the fun side of life and his adventurous spirit, recounting one of his favorite memories when his friend snuck past several faculty and students to sled down a school hill on a trash lid. “It’s things like that that really bring joy to my heart and really make this a memorable school.” Nick considers a balance of fun and learning the key to success for the school, and he wants to encourage others to experience the same. “When you do activities that make people really invested, giving some cool, funky, wacky ideas, that would improve the experience greatly. Something fun, like really fun, that the majority likes.” He also says that he believes the school has a great family feeling, and that nobody is too aggressive or unwelcoming, which helps him enjoy himself more at school.

Nick claims his Junior year has been the most fun for him so far. He enjoys taking the time to hang out with his classmates outside of school. “We should be having a lot of fun because we only have two more years together. Talk to new people, have some fun, and stay safe at the same time. I’d like to have fun in a safe and legal way. Like, no drugs. Drugs are bad. God didn’t want you to do drugs.” Nick says Seton doesn’t balance fun and education well, as this is his main priority. He says that the school lacks fun and interactive activities. “Certain classes should have more fun aspects to them. Interaction is fun and helps me absorb knowledge.” To elaborate, Nick used Mrs. Linge’s Social Studies class as an example. Mrs. Linge has activities in her class like newspaper fashion shows and paper-ball fights to help illustrate key themes in the chapters in entertaining ways.

Nick also provided some feedback on some aspects of the school that could be improved upon. He finds that the field trips at Seton are very lackluster, since the more fun-sounding ones to him were canceled and never brought back up, and found the ones he did go on to be boring and uninteresting. He considers a balance of fun and education very important, both at school and outside, so he’d like to see more interactive field trips in the future. Nick believes Seton could make some improvements moving forward. “Giving more freedom to students to do stuff outside of their classes. Not being limited to staying in the cafeteria for study hall, or being allowed to sign out and pick up lunch or DoorDash. We can prove that we can be trusted, and there should be more leisure.” Nick unexpectedly said that he would like to repurpose and refurbish the fallout shelter spaces into student recreation areas, like a cinema.

Above all, Nick believes that school should be a welcoming, fun, entertaining, and interactive environment where it doesn’t feel like a chore to learn and people are excited about going to class. Nick had some advice for current and future Seton students. “My piece of advice would be: be safe, be prepared, and make sure you’re really respectful to your peers. Remember the Golden Rule: treat others how you want to be treated.” A fun, yet safe and insightful environment is what Nick hopes Seton can become.