“I’m tired,” said junior Vera Barkosky, going to bed at 8 p.m. This is a common conversation experienced every day by her stay-up-late friends who can’t relate and literally anyone else who knows her.

Imagine the dream life, going to bed early every night, getting your homework done RIGHT after school, drinking coffee in your bed at five in the morning – that is a cunning depiction of the typical life of Vera Barkosky. A normal, driven teenager in the twenty-first century.

However, unlike most teenagers that go to Ames high, for Vera, Ames hasn’t always been home. At a young age, she lived abroad with her parents in the Netherlands and in South Korea. She spoke Dutch and just a little bit of Korean in her 8-year old -just short of a dream- fantasy life. She also spent some of her life living in Minnesota, which isn’t as impressive.

Although she didn’t love it at the time, she continues to daydream about her time out of America and how she didn’t appreciate it enough. Years later, one of her goals in life is to live abroad again and appreciate all its benefits a little more thoroughly.

She is one of the most involved people I know in clubs and everything else. Besides volunteering almost weekly, Vera is involved in almost every choir activity, is a co-president of Mayor’s Youth Committee, and is very present in community discussions. Her day to day life is very hectic but she still finds a way to get a chai from her favorite place – the cafe.

Despite her crazy life now, as for the rest of her life, Vera doesn’t have much planned out (as if any junior does). However, she does know one thing about her future career pathway.