Graduating Seniors Head Pack to the Future

Karyn Mintz is 17 and an A student who is graduating from Thousand Oaks High School in a few days. She is vivacious, well-spoken and so eager to get out of her hometown that she can hardly sit still.

“I’m counting the days,” said Mintz, the school’s band president who is headed for UC Berkeley in the fall. “I can’t wait because I’m really sick of Thousand Oaks. . . . Not that I don’t like the town, but it gets so boring. You get burned out on it.”

Across the county at Oxnard High, senior Heather Mathis also is 17 and an A student. She, too, is ready to trade home for college. Mathis, who will enroll at UCLA in the fall, said she liked growing up and going to school in Oxnard, but now she’s outgrown it.

“Most people love it here, but to me it’s a small-town atmosphere, and I’m not a small-town girl,” Mathis said. “I feel if I want to get some culture I have to go to Los Angeles. . . . I can’t wait to get to Westwood.”

Hundreds of students will be handed their diplomas this week at Oxnard and Thousand Oaks, which represent perhaps as much of a contrast in types of schools as Ventura County has to offer.

At Oxnard High, the student body is about 70% minority, while Thousand Oaks High is 82% white. About 52% of Oxnard graduates go to college, while 85% of the grads in Thousand Oaks go on. The median income in Oxnard last year was about $30,000, $18,000 less than in Thousand Oaks.

Recently, 10 seniors from these two schools sat down to talk about graduation and what may await them in college and beyond.

The groups reflected the ethnic makeup at each school. The Oxnard students were a diverse group of Latino, white, Asian and black youths, contrasting an all-white group of Thousand Oaks students.

The aspirations of the working-class Oxnard group were, in general, loftier than those of the middle- and upper-middle-class students from Thousand Oaks. The Oxnard students saw themselves as future doctors, a TV anchor and an engineer, while the Thousand Oaks group aspired to fill jobs in construction, the law and advertising.

Yet, in tune with the concept that commitment is in vogue again, the majority said earning a big paycheck is not their most important goal.

Mintz and her three Thousand Oaks classmates represent a cross section of backgrounds and ambitions, but they are united in their eagerness to get out of Thousand Oaks.

Jason Foley, 17, plans to attend Moorpark College after graduation. He hopes to go into construction or contracting work. Before he settles into his adult life, he said, he wants to see the world.

He wants to live in a place where there’s more to do for fun than “throw parties and get into trouble at homes where there’s no parents,” Foley said.

Christen Holmes, 18, is headed down the coast for Marymount Palos Verdes College, a private community college in Rancho Palos Verdes. She also is unsure what she will study but said she hopes to transfer to UC Santa Barbara, and maybe eventually go to law school.

And Sara Patterson, 17, said she will continue her education next fall at either Pierce College or Ventura College. Her work with injured athletes in the school’s athletic training program has inspired her to become a paramedic, she said. If her plans to be a paramedic don’t work out, she said she might become a marine biologist.

The Thousand Oaks students characterized their background as insulated and sheltered, saying it has fueled their eagerness to get out into the larger world.

“We’ve been pretty much diapered, we’ve been pretty babied in high school,” Mintz said. “I think it’s going to be very exciting to go out into the world and basically have to rely on ourselves.”

But they realize they are lucky, compared with students in poorer areas.

“It’s a really mellow area around here,” Foley said. “No real violence or anything. Maybe here or there, every once in a while.”

That mellowness apparently does not always extend to the classroom, however. They describe Thousand Oaks’ competitive atmosphere as fierce.

“We’re brought up to be the best by our parents,” Patterson said. “Then we get to school and everybody’s struggling to be the best. So there’s that competition.”

The competition “gets to be too much sometimes,” Mintz said. “I know some people who, academically, by sometime in their junior year, said, ‘Forget this.’ Kids who are really smart said, ‘I’m sick of having to be the best,’ and basically said, ‘Screw it.’ ”

But, Foley added, a competitive background might give Thousand Oaks students a tougher work ethic. “It’ll help out in the long run. It’ll make us work harder toward what we want to accomplish.”

Even though they started out their interview expressing their dissatisfaction with Thousand Oaks, the students ended by saying it was a good place to grow up, “kind of conducive to doing better.” It’s the kind of place they’d return to as adults, they say.

“I want to raise my kids in a place that’s safe, like we’ve been raised,” Holmes said.

While some of the Thousand Oaks students are already looking back on high school with some nostalgia, others, like Patterson, are looking ahead.

“I’m just ecstatic,” Patterson said. “I’m ready to go out there and get on with my life. . . . It’s been 12 years. I’m ready.”

For the half dozen Oxnard High students, the eagerness to graduate is probably best symbolized by the high school gates. They can’t wait to get beyond them.

“They treat us like babies here,” said Brian Matthews, 17. “I mean, what are these gates? They cage us in. . . . Give us the benefit of the doubt. Give us a chance.”

Matthews, who ran track, played soccer and was president of the “nerd club,” the California Scholarship Federation, is going to UC Berkeley. He is unsure what he wants to be but is “looking into the sciences” as a major.

Tracey Cantrell, 17, describes herself as a whiz at math but average in other subjects. She said she’s going to “good old Ventura College” and hopes to transfer to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and graduate to a career as a civil engineer.

In a few months, soft-spoken Maria Anguiano, 17, will enroll at Stanford, where she plans to study the biological sciences and biochemistry. Later, she hopes to go to Harvard Medical School.

Anguiano said she wasn’t raised with the expectation that she would make it to college. “My mother wanted me to follow the old Mexican tradition--if you’re not married by 18, you’re not successful,” Anguiano said.

When asked why she is breaking from that tradition, Anguiano smiled. “Because I didn’t believe in it,” she said.

Class valedictorian Amador Canlas, 18, is preoccupied these days with composing his graduation speech.

He is undecided about his career plans or what he will study when he enrolls at UC Berkeley this fall. For the moment, he seems more concerned--and jokes that he is upset--about being assigned to an all-male dorm.

Alex Soriano, 17, was captain of the football team and a shot-putter. He also is a member of the French club and a math and science club.

Although accepted at Cal State Northridge, he said he’ll go to Ventura College. “It’s closer to home and a lot cheaper too,” he said. At Ventura, he plans to give up athletics and concentrate on studying.

“It’s too much time,” said Soriano, who’s thinking about becoming a doctor. “The time I spend on football I could be doing my homework.”

The Oxnard students said one of the best things about their school has been its ethnic variety, which they believe has prepared them for what they’ll encounter when they graduate.

“I think with having so many different ethnic groups you have to learn to deal with different kinds of people,” Cantrell said. “It’s really difficult to be prejudiced and get away with it, because there’s so many different kinds of people.”

Mathis agreed. “Any stereotype you can conjure up is counteracted by somebody at this school.”

Although they felt sheltered, the Oxnard students also said they have been exposed to a lot because of the school’s diversity not only ethnically, but economically.

“We have gangs,” Matthews said, adding “it’s not like they walk around the halls and are going to stab you with a pencil or something. They definitely do not cause fear. . . . It’s not like Watts or anything. It’s Oxnard.”

When it comes to making money, even though they are practical, expectations run high.

“I’m so determined to get to where I want to be that I feel like there’s nothing out there that can stop me from getting it,” Mathis said. Television journalism, she said, “is a competitive field, but somebody has to do it. Why can’t it be me?”

Said Soriano, who plans to be a doctor: “I think it’s kind of silly to go to school for seven years and not get paid a lot.”

But they are calm, even blase, about graduation and walking beyond those front gates for the final time as students.

“Sometimes you kind of figure graduations are a dime a dozen,” Soriano said. “I’m happy to get out, but it’s not a great deal.”

Mathis admits she is “kind of scared” to graduate but said, “It doesn’t mean what it meant when my parents graduated from high school. You could make a living then just with a high school diploma. But not anymore.”

Said Cantrell: “There are a lot of people who don’t make it through high school, who would love to go back. . . . But for people who make it through, it’s just another step.”