The Humans of RV project is a weekly column based off of Brandon Stanton’s seminal “Humans of New York” project, which seeks to “catalogue the city’s inhabitants” through photography and brief interviews. RV seeks to expand on this project with our own “cataloguing” of RV students and an examination into all the unique perspectives here at school. 

Note: this transcript has been edited and condensed for publication purposes.

I graduated RV in 2019 and I am currently a sophomore at Villanova University. I am studying Spanish and Economics with being really into health and wellness. I am also interested in pursuing sustainability as a career, kind of like marrying my interest in food, health and wellness. That was probably the main reason I got interested in business and chose to pursue it.

RV was a really close environment, considering how big of a school it was. I found my people in RV early on through FBLA, Model UN, the RV Dance team and many more. RV is an easy place where you would want to get involved, get into the school spirit and overall it’s encouraging and supportive.

I had really close connections with my teachers and most of them influenced what I am studying today. In fact, still remember the things they had taught me and what they had said to me.

One of my favorite things about RV was the extracurricular activities. You obviously learned in the classroom, but most of the growth happened outside of the classroom. When I joined organizations like FBLA and Model UN, that’s when I felt like I was learning the most. 

I didn’t know that I had goals to grow with the organization until I actually started to get involved and had upperclassmen to look up to. FBLA and Model UN gave me many opportunities to take on and a lot of responsibilities in different leadership positions. I was always working with other people, putting on conferences and/or putting on an event. I think RV and getting involved really helped me out with working in teams and doing school projects even until now.

In Model UN, I was the chair of my committee during my senior year. For FBLA, I was the president of our chapter. I also worked on the National President Council, it was a lot of fun and gave me a great opportunity to branch out of our chapter.

While I was president for FBLA, my big goals were to emphasize community service [and] professional development, and for the competitive events, [to make] more study guides and [have] more study sessions. I think these were a great way for more people to invest more time and energy in FBLA. The more you put in, the more you got out of it.

Personally I love to travel, so the best part of FBLA for me was getting to go to different events, even if it was States in Atlantic City. We went to Anaheim and San Antonio, which probably was my favorite trip, it was such a cool city which I loved to explore. I also worked as a conference intern at the National Conference in San Antonio. It was really fun to see a glimpse of the behind the scenes of FBLA. The last night there, which was the award ceremony, my friend Vivian and I placed first in our competitive event. That was really a great time in FBLA and was my last conference.

A big thing FBLA has helped me with is getting comfortable talking with people. Whether it was running for officer, having to give a speech or doing campaign booths.

I am in the business school at Villanova University, although I’m not quite sure if I want to start my own business in the future. I have been interested in social impact stuff, so if I can start a social impact organization or nonprofit, it would be really cool. FBLA has actually shaped a lot of it with managing doing community service as an organization but also doing professional development.

Something I wish someone would have told me in high school is to slow down and take breaks, especially where there is a lot of pressure to do everything, like take all the honors and AP classes, do all the clubs and get into college. It’s where you are always working towards something that’s important but it’s also important to take a step back and spend time with your family and friends. Have those breaks and time to rest, you don’t want to get burnt out. Have those priorities and know that school is not everything.

One thing RV does well is giving students the opportunity to start up their own thing and own clubs. When I was at RV, one of my friends started the Botany club.

Something RV can improve on and be aware of is that not every student has the same financial background; there are a lot of different types of students at RV that are facing different challenges. A big part of FBLA is to be able to pay to go to conferences or to pay to have business clothes to wear, and those are not things necessarily accessible to every student. I think keeping that [in] mind and trying to make sure that all of those opportunities…are being afforded to all different types of students [is important].

FBLA has helped me with my confidence, it gave me something in high school aside from doing well in my classes to really prioritize, be passionate about and focus. It gave me the opportunity to have a lot of different experiences that I can draw upon.