“Why would I narrow my focus?”

That’s the question Viktorija asks me every time I ask her, confused, how she manages to balance all her interests. Her point is: you can – and should! – try new things even when you’re not good at them. “I play soccer even though I don’t want to be a soccer player. People sing karaoke without vocal training.” So why can’t a high school student simultaneously be a painter, a business leader, and a climate scientist?

Viktorija is a visual artist, with a portfolio of drawings you might catch at an exhibition in a gallery, her school, or at least on the wall of the room where she took our Zoom call. Not every piece needs to be ideal. On the contrary, she’s learned the most from works where she got a lot of criticism. “I don’t know why we don’t encourage kids to draw for pleasure, since that’s the way you develop a desire and an interest for art.” In pursuit of that kind of pleasure, her friend group visits galleries and debates the classic question of what did the artist mean to tell us?

When she’s not in a gallery, Viktorija, alongside her friends, is developing a student business that will manufacture a device to charge your phone using the thermal energy from a cup of coffee or tea. In the past few months, they’ve made a lot of progress: they’re waiting on a patent for their solution and they’ve already gotten a few awards from entrepreneurship competitions. But despite their success, she recalls the moments when things weren’t going smoothly: a few months ago, they presented at a competition from a parking lot in front of the mall because they couldn’t use school facilities. 

At the same time – and completely unrelated to her other interests – Viktorija is learning Chinese. She started because of a friend whose dad came from China to Macedonia, and she liked the language so much that she’s now taking classes. She’s gotten to the point of light conversation (“Once a month we have calls in a mixture of English and Chinese, and we’re at the point where we can now gossip. Don’t put this in your profile.”) She’s thrilled that she’s already met her future UWC peers who she can practice with.

She isn’t likely to pursure a career in any of these fields, though. Academically, Viktorija is interested in chemistry – especially environmental chemistry. At the Canadian UWC, she’ll be part of a new Climate Action and Leadership Diploma program. She’ll be taking classes in chemistry and biology, but also listening to lectures from Indigenous leaders from Western Canada. Even before she had heard of UWC, Viktorija would recycle her paper. I don’t mean “she put used paper in the recycling bin.” I mean “she took used papers, recycled them, and made them into new, usable pieces of paper.” On her own! In her home!! 

And that’s how we get back to the central theme of our conversation: you can’t know what you like, or what you’re talented in, if you don’t try things out. So even though it’s hard to predict what a UWC experience for our students will look like, one thing I am sure of: Viktorija’s going to try just about every activity UWC has to offer.

July 2023,
Bobo Stankovikj