Yvette Uwase was halfway through her freshman year at Concord High School when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, derailing a high school career that had only just begun.
Learning from home was challenging in her household, which was noisy due to the presence of some family members who weren’t working. Uwase, a new American student who came to the U.S. from Rwanda in 2014, says the pandemic made her completely lose her motivation to succeed.
“I would only do the stuff I needed to do,” said Uwase, 17. “If they asked me to do a reading, I would just skim it, and then in class just let other people take over who actually were focused. I just literally chose not to focus because I just couldn’t.”
But at the start of junior year, she was encouraged to apply for the St. Paul’s School’s Advanced Studies Program, which accepts motivated high school students from around the state to live and learn at the private boarding school in Concord. Uwase realized it was the challenge she needed to regain her motivation.
With school back in person, Uwase began setting aside time to study with the goal of increasing her GPA. She wrote about her pandemic struggles in her application essay.
“I set a goal for my junior year to do my best and try,” Uwase said. “Because looking at my grades from freshman year and sophomore year, I knew that wasn’t going to get me into ASP. And then that really helped me, knowing that there was something to look forward to if I did really good.”
This summer, Uwase is one of nine new American students from Concord High School participating in the Advanced Studies Program ay St. Paul’s, one of the largest groups of new American students from Concord ever to attend. In total, 179 students from 54 high schools around the state – including 23 from Concord High – are enrolled in the program, which runs from June 25 to July 31.
On a recent Wednesday, they all gathered in the sunshine on the steps of the Memorial Hall building with students from high schools across New Hampshire for a snack break between class times.
The summer program is fully in person this year after offering an online program during COVID-19 in 2020 and a hybrid program in 2021 that included two weeks online and three weeks in residence.
“It’s amazing. We’re pretty much operating freely in terms of having dances and singing together and eating meals together,” said program director Alisa Barnard. “Even this fruit break, which is the high school equivalent of recess, they’re all out there together.”
Students begin their mornings with an assembly in the chapel four days a week, then attend an intensive primary class in a chosen subject from 9 a.m. to 1:45 p.m., with breaks for snack and lunch. In the afternoon, they do recreational activities with sports like badminton, swimming and ultimate Frisbee. After dinner, they have a study period from 7:30 until 10 p.m., and return to their dorms for lights out by 11 p.m.
Several students said the program has given them a burst of energy and passion for learning that they haven’t felt in years due to the pandemic.
Ajay Darjee, 18, a rising senior at Concord High, has been taking an engineering class – a subject he has been interested in since elementary school. He and Uwase have both been using the recreation time to learn how to swim – a skill neither of them had before this summer.
“I am so focused here,” Darjee said. “In Concord, I get my work done, I get good grades and everything, and I play good sports. But here it’s like every day, I’m just switched on. There’s not a moment where I’m not focused or I’m just goofing off. There’s time to goof off, and there’s time to study.”
Darjee, who came to the U.S. from Nepal with his family in 2012 at age 8, spoke openly about the struggles he experienced during his sophomore year after he became very ill with COVID and fell into a headspace clouded by fear and isolation.
“I felt like I was gonna die for a little bit. I was inside my room for like a month straight. I could not get out of that,” Darjee said. “I didn’t know how to socialize; I had to re-learn everything again. I didn’t really connect with my teachers, and I ended it off on a really bad note. I still got good grades, but I just didn’t feel like those grades were the level of the expectation that I had for myself.”
The anticipation of preparing for the ASP program helped him make a comeback during his junior year, and this summer Darjee said he’s been thriving with the program’s daily rhythm that balances work and social time. He hopes to continue the schedule – including the early morning wake-up time – at home even after the program ends.
Donciel Yemo, 17, a rising senior at Concord High, has been taking a class in exercise physiology, which he says is helping him learn nutrition and workout habits rooted in science that will help him as a soccer player. Yemo says it was initially intimidating to be placed in a residence hall with nobody that he knew, but he quickly began making friends in his dorm and his classes, and after just two weeks, the other students already felt like “family.”
“This is a judge-free zone, and people want you to do the best, and they want to do the best as well,” said Yemo, who came to the U.S. in from Congo in 2016 at age 10. He said being surrounded by motivated students has made him more motivated.
Yemo and Darjee said the other students they’ve met in the program have been interested to learn about their cultural backgrounds. Darjee said he played and sang a Nepali song on his guitar for his dorm-mates, who liked it so much they now ask him to sing every night. In his writing class, Darjee said he shared a piece he wrote about the cultural meaning behind his name, and his classmates were eager to learn more.
“The whole time there was just listening and taking notes, and I was really proud of myself for doing it,” Darjee said.
Darjee, Yemo and Uwase all said they plan to return to Concord High in the fall newly motivated to tackle senior year.
“I am going back with this mentality,” Uwase said. “There’s no way I’m gonna go back to procrastinating and waiting until midnight to turn it in. I hope I can keep this mindset, because it’s a good mindset to have when doing your schoolwork.”