Clara Place Senior Profile
March 12, 2021
The Senior BUHS Mathletes Captain And Her Plans For The Future
Clara Place is a 17 year old senior at Bishop Union High School. She has lived in Bishop her whole life with her dad, mom, older sister, and dog. She is the captain of the Bishop Union High School Mathletes team, and recently I had the privilege of interviewing her about her leadership position and her future in math.
Clara has been in Mathletes since her freshman year. She joined because she “knew math was [her] favorite school subject,” and because she liked the promise of a “club with people that have the same interests as [her].”
Her favorite aspect of Mathletes meets is the team problem.
“I think that people assume math is always really competitive individually, but we all get to work together to solve a problem,” Clara explains. “We all use different techniques or mindsets to achieve the same goal. It’s cool to see how everyone thinks differently.”
As the main captain of the Mathletes team, Clara has a lot of responsibilities.
“It’s a lot of organization. I help remind team members about meets and meetings, help Buchholz officiate the meets, pick who’s a regular, and encourage peers in my grade and younger to develop math skills and confidence in high pressure situations.” She says it would “be really nice to do something similar to Mathletes on a college level. That kind of a leadership position would be one of my goals.”
She is going to be majoring in general mathematics, and she applied to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana, Harvey Mudd College in California, and Macalester in Minnesota. She “enjoyed Bishop High School because of small class sizes and the additional help after classes.” She is looking at smaller colleges for “personalized college experience.
Clara hopes to gain “great math classes, interaction with professors, and summer research and internships.” She also wants “study abroad experience, research opportunities, educational enrichment, [and] professor-student research” from college.
In terms of a career, Clara hasn’t decided on anything definite yet. She will probably pursue a career in the STEM field. She is hoping to get further degree beyond a bachelor’s.
“There’s so many options in so many fields,” she explains. “It’s weird to look back on Success class and my plan. We’re not doing any of that anymore. We’ll see, who knows, hopefully [we end up doing] something we enjoy.”
