Senior Spotlight: Samantha Borglum
When the administration announced at freshman orientation that the Class of 2020 had 720 days of high school to complete, Samantha Borglum cried. Before high school had even started, she was ready for it to be over. Now, four years later, after many AP Classes, cross country meets, and many exciting memories, she has made it through those 720 days and plans to attend the University of Alabama at Birmingham for biomedical engineering.
Borglum grew up in Hartselle, attending F. E. Burleson, Hartselle Intermediate School, and then Hartselle Junior High (HJHS). When she started at Hartselle High School (HHS), she said, “I had Mrs. English, and we were her first freshman Pre-AP Biology class in a few years, and she absolutely terrified me. I cried every single day after school for a week just because she scared me, but she was my favorite teacher that year.”
A few years before high school, Borglum and her mom started Couch to 5k. She explained, “I heard about cross country on the intercom. I signed up for it, and then I went to the first day of practice, and they said go run a few miles. That didn’t go well, but my mom wouldn’t let me quit, so that’s how I ended up being in it. And then, after my first year, I really loved it.” Over the next few years, she loved the sport. The team participated annually in her favorite run, the Jesse Owens Memorial Race, but what she’s most proud of is her senior team. She said, “I was kind of the person that organized everything not sport related, if we were all to get together and do something as a team. So, I’m proud of the leadership position that I had going on there, but also, this last year in cross country, everyone had such respect for each other, and that was nice. I don’t think that was all me, but I think it had to do with the people who were in leadership-like roles like the seniors and the coaches.”
Borglum also took very rigorous AP classes at HHS, excelling with high grades and test scores. Her favorite class was AP Calculus with Bucky Garner. She explained, “It’s really not that hard to understand the way he explains it. It’s like he opens up your brain, puts calculus in it and then shuts it back again.” As for her hardest class, she would give that credit to AP Chemistry. Kelly Wade, Borglum’s AP Chemistry teacher, described her as having a very high work ethic. She said, “She is so incredibly intelligent, and she is such a hard worker. She's been amazing, even through these last few weeks of craziness. She is still working very hard to prepare for the AP exam even though technically she is finished with school. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to teach her.”
In addition to those classes, she participated in Spanish Club for 4 years. She planned to take the 2 years of Spanish to receive the credit for the Honors Diploma, but after the first few weeks of the class, she knew she would take it for the remainder of her high school career. She enjoyed learning about Spanish and Mexican culture, singing the Spanish songs, and also learning from her teacher whom she loved, Señor Will (Dennis Willingham).
During her senior year, Borglum had the senior project class, which led her to job shadow at LifeWorks physical therapy. During her four hours there every week, she observed a lot about the healing process after injuries or surgeries. She even suspected physical therapy could be a future career for her, but soon discovered that was not the case.
Since that first day of school, Borglum has learned and grown in immense ways. She said, “I’ve learned a lot about myself. Going into high school, I didn’t really know I would love Spanish the way I do, and now I plan to minor in it. I wanted to be a pharmacist whenever I was a freshman, but now, I’ve really changed.” Now, she plans to work at HudsonAlpha in Huntsville and design medicines and implants for chronic heart failure patients. She explained, “My grandmother actually had chronic heart failure, and she died from it. It progressed so fast, and there wasn’t really anything the doctors could do about it. And that really affected me because it was actually during my high school years.
So, I decided I want to change it; I want to try and make it better for people in the future.”
Congratulations, Samantha!
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