Sequeira sisters compare high school experiences

Ever since sophomore Fiona Sequeira was little, she was entertained with stories of her sisters’ experiences in high school, from Jessica Sequeira’s tales of the journalism room at Saratoga to Sophie Sequeira’s stories about her experiences at Archbishop Mitty High School. 

For Fiona, high school wasn’t so daunting; it wasn’t a surprise. It was something that she had been told about for the majority of her life.

“It has been helpful to hear about their experiences and learn from them,” Fiona said.  “I didn't go into [high school] without knowing what to expect.” 

While Fiona sees many similarities between her and Jessica’s times in high school, she also said that there are several educational differences.

“We do a lot more technology-based activities now, such as [using] Supersite for French,” Fiona said.

Technology was still a big part of school life when Jessica, who graduated in 2007, attended Saratoga, but according to Fiona, it was not incorporated into the curriculum as much.

However, the competition and pressure that Jessica faced in high school was similar to the pressure that students currently face.

“Students were competitive with one another academically — everyone knew everyone else's marks and how many hours they'd studied — but even more so with themselves,” she said.

However, she added that while students were competitive, there was never a lot of attention paid to the humanities side, until she got into higher levels of education at Harvard University.

“The humanities were considerably neglected, and despite some top-notch teachers, classes suffered from a lack of student interest in the subjects, even at the AP level,” Jessica said. “For me, true interaction with peers interested at a rigorous analytical level in literature, philosophy and political science would only come in university classes.”

Fiona also said that socially, the two had similar relationships in high school.

“I have a close group of friends, just like Jessica had when she was at school,”  she said.

However, the two sisters had different interests academically, since Jessica, who was editor-in-chief of the Falcon during her senior year, always had a passion for humanities while Fiona plans to pursue something in science.

Additionally, Jessica never found herself excited by athletic events or sports, while Fiona is extremely committed to soccer and was on the varsity team last year.

Jessica was also not excited by school spirit and rallies.

“In my memory, mandatory rallies were always somewhat of a chore for everyone, in large part because they felt so artificial,” she said.

She explained that this was because the school was so academically oriented, so she found it strange that it  “[whipped] itself up into a pseudo-athletic frenzy once a month.”

While Jessica disliked the competition and obsession with grades and scores, she does have fond memories of her high school days.

“My most vivid memories are of long life conversations perched on cars in the front parking lot and long evenings in the journalism room putting that month's issue to bed,” she said. “A kind of mystical Brideshead Revisited-type innocence hung over it all.”