Senior Spotlight: Collin Olsen Day

Collin Olsen Day is a Community school senior who is likely most known for his goofy persona and sort of nerdy attitude. He enjoys playing Magic: The Gathering and other such games in his freetime, along with reading, enjoying television, and hanging out with his friends Alex Lindstrom, Isaiah Wells, and Misael Triplett. Our interview was conducted in Derek’s room in the Comm School.

His favourite subjects are “definitely either history or english because James Eastman [is a] great teacher, Jim Jennings [is an] amazing teacher, and Derek’s lectures in history are just the best.” Derek was standing a few feet away during this interview and was notably smiling whilst we had this conversation. His least favourite class was his freshman year World Today class “because we crammed so much into that half semester.”

His biggest challenge in high school thus far was stress. He elaborated by saying, “I stress out a lot and it’s been… mentally damaging. I have like PTSD from freshman year Math and Biology.” So far in his life his biggest challenge has been “learning how not to be a dumbass… just learning how to function in society, how to keep track of time, how to read a room, basic life skills. Adulting is hard.”

Collin’s definition of a good teacher is “a healthy mix of two parts Dale Leaster, two parts Derek, one part Jim, and point zero five parts Tyler Grinberg… maybe a little bit of Pam Duncan thrown in for good measure.” Along with this, his advice to younger classmen is to moderate your slacking: “You gotta just balance your slacking perfectly.”

When I prompted him the question of what school has taught him thus far in his life, he said, “even if you can’t get something completely done, at least try, don’t stress out about things too much, [and] make sure you’re very careful about who you’re friends with.”

Currently Collin attends the Community School as stated before. He chose this school because of his long history with it. “My dad taught here when I was really little.” At this point Derek chipped in with a neat little factoid about how Collin’s handprint is just outside. “It was kind of where I grew up, and I also felt that it was the kind of environment I wanted to learn in, like it was relaxed but still full of people who wanted to see me succeed.” For the future, Collin hopes to attend Sonoma or Humboldt State due to how lovely the campuses seem, the good programs, and how they would be nice places to live.

To conclude our interview, I gave him the same two questions I gave Sophie Barrett and Nathaniel Woodrow Wildcat Mills. It took him a few minutes of thinking to reach a conclusion for the number of pennies that would fit in Derek’s room, but he eventually came to the confident conclusion: “six million.” When I prompted him with the situation of a penguin entering into Derek’s room wearing a sombrero and speaking, he replied, “He (the penguin) says, ‘Guys I came back!’ and it’s Hudson (a former student we all miss), and he decided Fort Bragg wasn’t good to begin with.”