Senior Spotlight: Isaiah Wells

Isaiah Wells is a senior at Mendocino’s Community High School, whose most recognizable attributes are his striking hair and incredible love of games. When he isn’t focused on other things, Isaiah enjoys playing Magic: The Gathering and team based video games. Our interview took place in Derek’s room in the community school, “where he spends a majority of his time,” commented James Eastman, one of the community school teachers.

Throughout his four years of high school, Isaiah’s favourite subject is History “with Derek, of course.” His least favourite class was World Today with Andy due to past experiences during his freshman year. Isaiah Wells’ ideal teacher is “a teacher who is willing to work with you if you don’t understand, one-on-one”; he did not cite any specific teacher for this question.

Isaiah’s hardest challenges have been “graduating,” (Misael Triplett chimed in with a quick “Finding Nemo?” during Isaiah’s pause here, to which we all chuckled) “and finding the motivation to do anything related to school.” Unfortunately, school has not taught him any important life lessons thus far, but we have hope. However, Isaiah did have some decently helpful advice for the younger generations after he chastised me for losing his original interview from December: “know how long you can procrastinate for… be aware of how much time you have to waste, and you don’t have to go to college.”

Wells attends Mendocino Community High School and has since his freshman year. When asked why he chose this school, he started slowly, “I wanted to go to this school because… why did I wanna go to this school?… I wasn’t friends with anyone when I came here. [It] was because I actually didn’t want to be around my class, to be completely honest. I was like, ‘well these people kind of suck’ so.” After high school, Isaiah Wells plans to go to the US Navy for six years, “for two years of schooling and four years active duty. I’m not going to college, more schooling sounds awful.”

With our interview drawing to a close, I prompted him the more serious question of if a penguin walked through Derek’s door right now, what would he say and why is he here? His answer: “The penguin is migrating south, don’t ask me why. Oh, south to get tacos, that’s why it has a sombrero.” I then asked him how many pennies would fit into Derek’s room, and he confidently mumbled, “probably like a billion. Probably…”