The Future is Now
This is one of a series of profiles of noteworthy Snohomish County high school graduates: Arianna Calvin, Kamiak, and Tholen Blasko, Sultan (WSU) • Hayden Davis, Lake Stevens (Harvard) • Peter Faber, Snohomish and Academy NW (US Naval Academy) • Michael Larson, Everett (Gonzaga) • Naomi Lee, Kamiak (UW) • Aurelio Valdez-Barajas, Mariner (SPU)
SULTAN — The last time Tholen Blasko and Arianna Calvin hung out together was in preschool.
“That was so long ago,” Calvin said.
“We’d have to get the scrapbooks out,” Blasko said.
The pair both attended Sky Valley Cooperative Preschool in Sultan. Then they parted ways.
He is now graduating from Sultan High School and from Everett Community College as a Running Start student.
She is graduating from Kamiak High School in Mukilteo, as well as the early-college Ocean Research College Academy on Everett’s waterfront — a program her mother, Ardi Kveven, was just launching when the pair were best friends in those carefree days of coloring and exploring.
They’ll soon be at the same school again.
Blasko and Calvin are each heading to Washington State University.
Not just that.
Both won Distinguished Regents scholarships, which fully covers their tuition and fees.
“I saw your name and thought, ‘What? Tholen?’ ” Calvin recalled.
“Her name is Arianna and it says Mukilteo — no way,” Blasko recalled.
Blasko will be studying pre-dentistry.
After getting braces freshman year, he job-shadowed his orthodontist, and then a dentist. “I could totally do this my whole life,” Blasko said.
Calvin will be studying veterinary neuroscience.
She’s wanted to be a veterinarian since she was 6 years old. “I worked at a shelter full-time for the summer and that got me interested in how animal brains work,” Calvin added.
Both say their college-level work through ORCA and Everett Community College has tempered any nerves they have.
“It just feels like I’m making another transition, like high school to Running Start,” Blasko said.
“Right now, to me it just feels like ‘get to the end’ — the final push,” Calvin said. “There’s also so many changes — like, whoa — but also basking in that at the same time.”
Both are entering the Honors College. That means smaller class sizes.
“So I’m sure we’ll see each other,” Blasko said.
There are others from Snohomish and Sultan who are heading to the same place, noted Calvin. “It will be cool to reconnect with them.”
Melissa Slager: mslager@heraldnet.com, 425-339-3432.
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