Arrica Sylvester

The Senior Scoop is a podcast that allows the community to hear from graduating seniors about their experiences and future plans. In this episode, Chris interviews Arika Sylvester, who will be attending Alpena Community College to study for her nurse's aid certificate. Arika has been involved in the school band since fourth grade and has fond memories of performing at band festivals. She plans to continue working at H&H Bakery and Restaurant while saving up for college expenses. Arika shares her advice about giving effort to receive results and forming good habits in middle school. The podcast ends with a discussion about the upcoming band concert and some random questions for Arika. The Senior Scoop is an opportunity for the community to hear directly from the senior class about their experiences, hopes, dreams, and reflections. The Scoop is a result of a collaboration between administration and the Class of 2023. We hope you'll enjoy chilling with us each week as we dish up a sweet treat of accumulated Wolverine wisdom 13 years in the making and introduce you to the fantastic young men and women who will soon become AGS alumni and tomorrow's community leaders. I'm your Senior Scoop host, Chris Ming, the proud superintendent of the Algrave-Simms School District. Thanks for listening. Now, let's dig in. Good afternoon, podcast listeners. I am here with another graduating senior for our Senior Scoop podcast. I have Arika Sylvester. Arika, thank you for coming down today. Yep. It's a pleasure to be on here. Well, thanks for being here. You're giving up a little bit of fourth hour and a little bit of lunch today, so I appreciate the sacrifices you're making. I know how important it is for teenagers to get their food. Yeah. It's a hard sacrifice, but it's a choice I made. Well, I appreciate you doing that. You only have a few weeks left. Are you excited? Yeah. It's pretty exciting. I sense a little bit of hesitation with that answer. Are you not quite as excited or are you a little scared? I'm not really scared. I just... I've been here for 13 years. It's a little sentimental, if anything. Okay. So, 13 years of coming to the same spot, getting up in the morning, getting your clothes on, packing your backpack, and coming to the same location for 13 years. What are you going to do that Tuesday after Memorial Day when you don't have to come to school anymore? You don't have to come to 310 South Court Street? Sleep in. Sleep in. Okay. So, assuming at some point during the day you're going to wake up, what then? What are we going to do now that we don't have that same routine? Things are going to change a little bit, eh? Well, I do have a job currently, so I'll probably pick up more hours there and, like, start saving up more money for my tuition for Alpena Community College and, like, save up for apartments and stuff like that up there. I'm already saving up, but... Okay. So, where do you work right now? H&H Bakery and Restaurant. Excellent. What do you do there? I mainly do... I mainly make the pizzas, but I also help with, like, the dishes. I'll help with waitresses or do food prep. I'll even help cashier and stuff. Well, if you make the pizzas, then on behalf of my son, I want to say thank you, because he is a big fan of the H&H pizza. He likes his with bacon on it. So, thank you. Good job on that. You mentioned Alpena Community College. That's the plan for after we graduate? Yep. All right. So, are you planning on living up there? Yeah. It would be a pretty long drive to commute up there and here. Okay. And so, what do you want to study at ACC? I'm planning on studying for my nurse's aid certificate. Nurse's aid. Okay. And what does a nurse's aid do? Well, a nurse's aid usually... I'm going to home health care, so it usually prepares you to learn how to properly lift someone, to move them into a wheelchair or to another side of the bed if they aren't able to move themselves, different diets that some people will need, and how to prepare them properly, different... Like, I'll be learning a dosage calculation, which will be like learning the correct kind of how to add, if they have this medication, this medication, how would I balance that? That's kind of what you would learn. Okay. And so, how did you become interested in this future job prospect? My mother does home health care, and she also works at the hospital in the kitchen. So, kind of watching her, and especially during the pandemic, having to... Being able to take care of people and also having that job security of having a job, even during the tough times, that helped me figure out that that was the job I wanted. Okay. Well, I think it's an admirable position. It's a little bit odd to me that you would be on the road all the time, but for some people who do that, they really love it. In fact, one of the parents here is a traveling nurse, and so I've spoken with her about it. It seems like you're in your car an awful lot, but there are benefits to being able to see people in their own homes, too, huh? Yeah, but it's definitely more of a routine than what it would be in the ER. So, I think it'd be very interesting. Okay. So, let's talk a little bit about your time here. You mentioned you've been here for 13 years. So, literally started as a kindergarten way back when, when you were five years old. Now, here you are, a senior, going to be walking across the stage. Are there any fond memories that really jump out to you about your time here at AGS? There's been some fun things, like going to the state band festivals and the district band festivals, going to, like, watching the football games by doing marching bands. A lot of band-related stuff, I'm realizing, is the stuff I remember. I like some of the projects. And so, how long have you been involved with the band? Since fourth grade. And what instrument do you play? I play the flute and the saxophone. Oh, excellent. Which one are you better at? The flute. I've been playing longer. And you just had perfect ones at state festival. It was absolutely amazing. I was there, took that in, and I have to say, I was absolutely blown away by the sound quality that we put out there. And if I am recalling correctly, I believe the judges said something along the lines of they didn't really have a whole lot of feedback they could give us. Just commending you and your classmates on overcoming that adversity of missing out on all that practice in band and still putting forth perfect results. Yeah, we, not to brag, but our band does, the last couple of years, have gotten that a lot of just very nit, like, very tiny details, like maybe being more artistic with certain areas, but other than that, I think we have a pretty strong band, and everyone there works really hard to do our best. We all give it our 100%. If someone gives only 90%, the entire band suffers. Well, in a band our size, if someone's not giving their whole, it certainly stands out, correct? Yes. It's not like some of those larger schools that might have, like, 15 flutes playing. How many do we have? We have five in our senior band. Five in the senior band. Well, I have absolutely been beyond impressed with our band, and you are a large part of that, so kudos to that. And thank you for producing that quality sound, and quite honestly, if you look at what we have going on here at AGS, band is our noteworthy, our most noteworthy position that we have. I mean, just walk into Miss Gordon's room, and what do you see all around the room? All trophies. All the trophies. Every wall space available is filled up with plaques and trophies of all the accomplishments of that amazing band, so thank you for producing that sound. I look forward to continuing to hear that quality as we move forward. So band was a big part. Did you know it was going to be that big of a part when you picked it up in fifth grade? I knew I was probably going to stay in it because I've never been into sports, and my parents wanted me to do at least one kind of extracurricular activity, and they counted band as that. And I didn't really want to do gym in elementary or in middle school, so I decided to do band. And I didn't think I'd be as into it as I am, but I do really enjoy it. Is there anything special planned for the concert on Wednesday? Because I've heard a couple rumors about some things that might be involved. Is there anything you're allowed to talk about? Let's just say we're mixing sports and band a little bit, and jazz band. So band and sports are going to be mixed? A little bit. More than just the fact that the performance is in the gym? Yeah. Okay. So that's good to know. All right. So now is that time when I just like to ask a couple random questions. All right. Have you heard about this? Have people warned you about the random questions? Yeah. Okay. So I'll start out with a softball. A nice easy one for you. What is your favorite movie and why? My favorite movie I think has to be the Ace Ventura series, but I think my favorite one is, what is it called? The one that they go down to, I think it's like Africa or something. It's quite funny. Okay. So I'll ask another one now. Would you rather have a lifetime supply of plain M&M's or 600 of your favorite candy bars? 600 of my favorite candy bars. Okay. And what is that favorite candy bar? The Bueno bars that have the Nutella. It tastes like Nutella. Okay. I've never heard of that one. Why would you take that over a lifetime supply? Because they can be pretty expensive, so I don't get them all the time. So having 300 of them, even if I get tired of them, I can always sell them off and make money off of them too. Okay. And I don't like M&M's that much. No? Okay. All right. So here's another one from my random list of questions here. What is the weirdest thing you've ever eaten? I've eaten frog legs before. Okay. I hope they were cooked. Yes, they were cooked. Did you like them? As a kid, I liked them. Me and my cousin, whenever she came over, we'd go down to our pond and we'd catch frogs and then we'd cook them up and me and her would just eat them by the plate full. Oh, my goodness. Well, that's a little bit weirder than buying them in a restaurant, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, you've done a wonderful job so far, and now I'd like to give you the opportunity to think about your time and your success here at All Gray Sims and share some words of wisdom. They can be words of wisdom that you're sharing with underclassmen, students like you who have spent their entire careers here, or they can be words of wisdom that you wish you would have known when you were sixth grade, seventh grade, ninth grade, whatever it happens to be. So what words would you like to share, some quote that you'd like to live by for your time here at All Gray Sims? I'd say, I put this for my student quote, too. You give what you give. So the amount of effort you put into something is the amount of effort you get back from a person or from the world. It's really an equal exchange, and you have to keep giving to receive. You have, just like in middle school, you have to give that. I kind of fell behind in middle school because I just felt like it didn't mean that much because I wasn't going to go to college, so it didn't really matter. But then I realized those skills and those habits you form in middle school stay with you throughout high school, and they're really hard to break. So it's good to form good habits in middle school. I think that is absolutely excellent advice. So thank you very much for sharing that, and also your experiences here at All Gray Sims. Archai, I wish you the best of luck, and congratulations on your graduation. Thank you. This has been a production of the All Gray Sims School District. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you join us again soon for another Senior School.