Aline Nasselquist believes that success comes from hard work. Now, her own hard work is being recognized.
The Creighton Community School Grade 12 student was one of four winners of the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association (SWNA) Junior Citizen of the Year Award.
Nasselquist earned $3,000 toward post-secondary education through the award.
When the news came that she was one of the four winners, Nasselquist was pleased, for a practical reason.
“I was pretty excited because university is pretty expensive,” she said.
“I try to work as hard as I can. Good things seem to come to you when you work really hard.”
Art teacher Catherine Joa was the spark behind Nasselquist’s application.
“She told me about it. She said that I seemed like a good fit for it,” said Nasselquist, who has been in classes taught by Joa since she was 12.
Together, the two refined Nasselquist’s application, with Joa adding in a letter of recommendation.
“She had three questions that she wrote on a piece of paper and then had me write all the answers to that I could think of during an art class,” said Nasselquist.
Nasselquist hopes to pursue arts once she heads to post-secondary school, but isn’t sure what her final goal is just yet. She has held lead roles in local theatre productions and has helped teach arts classes at Creighton School to younger students.
“I definitely want to go into the arts, but I do want to explore what’s out there, see more of the world, learn as much as I can. I’m not fully sure yet,” she said.
“I used to really want to be an art professor, but this year, there’s been something in me saying, ‘That’s not what you’re meant to do. You’re meant to learn more and teach people more than just the same thing every day.’”
Before that, Nasselquist plans to travel to Japan in August as an exchange student.
“I want to try and learn as much as I can while I’m there, see other art forms, learn the language as much as I can and maybe have some fun,” she said.
When looking back on her application for the award, Nasselquist thinks the thing that set her apart was something that can be rare in high school – openly admitting her own vulnerabilities.
“It asked, ‘How have you overcome life’s struggles?’ so I just listed everything
I could possibly think of,” she said.
“I tried to show all of myself – the best parts and the worst parts. I find a lot of people, when they apply, are very robotic and you get very generalized applications. So when I showed myself as a strong person who will work hard for what they want, but who also gets knocked down, I think that helped me stand out a lot.”
