Success at Collegiate - Meet Shiv
Shiv Patel is a junior at Collegiate Charter School of Lowell. He started attenging the school this year after moving from the U.K. and rapidly assimilated into Collegiate's welcoming school community.
In moving to a new school in the U.S. from a school in the U.K., Shiv expected it would take some time for him to make friends, get used to a new routine, and feel at home. He hit his stride almost immediately, however, and hasn’t looked back.
“When I got to Collegiate, everyone was very welcoming.” recalls Shiv, “Now I know everyone really well, and it feels like home.”
From his school in the U.K., Shiv was used to learning in an environment of accountability, so making the shift to Collegiate as a rigorous, college-preparatory public charter school was not that difficult. What has been different is the number of opportunities Shiv has had to try new things and develop new skills.
“I didn’t used to do much public speaking before I came here,” says Shiv, “but here I was able to join Model UN and got to speak in front of a lot of people. I also joined the track team, and I am a peer tutor for middle school students in math.”
Through tutoring other students in math, Shiv has been able to figure out more about his future path. “Being a peer tutor has made me realize that maybe teaching isn’t for me,” he says. “I like STEM subjects, and I’m thinking of going into bio-chemistry or biology after I graduate.”
If his performance in the Collegiate Science Fair is any indication of his potential success in STEM fields, Collegiate will be able to rank a scientist among their alumni. Shiv took first place in the fair with his project, which demonstrated that the junior class at Collegiate is representative of the country as a whole based on the graphing of their different types of fingerprints.
Like his fellow classmates, Shiv is looking forward to graduation at the end of next year. “It will be the first graduation for me and for the school, so I think it will be a big celebration,” he speculates. After that, Shiv will be off to college, where he will undoubtedly make as much of a mark as he has at Collegiate.
