Amy Gaudet loves the wilderness surrounding Bishop, California, but is worried that her thin jacket might not be warm enough for the chilly winter coming up. Amy is a junior who recently moved from Tuscon, Arizona, where the winter high in January is 64 degrees (rssweather.com). Considering that Bishop’s average winter temperature is 38 degrees (usclimatedata.com), Amy’s worry is very much justified.

Luckily, the drop in temperature seems to be the most difficult part of Amy’s new move. Although moving to a new state was challenging, Amy has already adjusted. She credits her quick acclimation to her love of getting involved, saying, “I try to get involved as quickly as I can. I hate not having something to do.”

Despite only living in Bishop for roughly a week, Amy is already participating in Playhouse 395’s latest production, Into the Woods. Amy will be playing Sleeping Beauty, a part which she joked, “only has one line, so it’s a pretty big role.” Amy is  excited to get involved with FFA, because “you get to raise an animal, [and] that is something you definitely can’t do in Tucson.” Amy is also planning on joining the swim team later this school year, and is “being switched into AP [language and composition].”

Since her move, Amy has enjoyed attending BUHS. Her former high school, Catalina Foothills, had “over a thousand” students enrolled, which she liked because “you don’t know everyone and there were always new people.” The small size of BUHS was a slight culture shock, but is not something she dislikes nor absolutely loves. One characteristic of BUHS that she does love is that it is not as stressful as Catalina Foothills.

“My [previous] school was really rigorous,” Amy said. Students at Catalina Foothills had an hour of homework for each regular class, and an additional hour and a half to two hours for each AP class every night, which meant Amy “would only sleep four hours a night.” Now, Amy has time to study and to sleep, and far less stress to consume her.

“Musicals were huge at my school,” said Amy, who also had a busy life outside of schoolwork. “The most recent [school play] was Twelfth Night by Shakespeare. I was Toby Belch.” One of Amy’s favorite things about her former school’s theater productions was that the students were always finding new ways to twist classic plays. For example, Twelfth Night was set in the 1960s. Amy hasn’t always been an actress – she was a member of the stage crew, learning lighting and even welding during her freshman and sophomore years of high school. Since Amy began acting, she has played roles in “lots of musicals” and other school productions.

Amy also was a member of choir. Amy sang in choir for six years, and her school’s choir had just qualified for States when she moved. However, she will be flying back to Arizona later this year to compete in another extracurricular activity: speech and debate. Amy was captain of her speech and debate team, which traveled to Phoenix to compete. This year, Amy’s team is planning to partake in the Harvard Tournament in Boston.

Another positive Amy has encountered at BUHS is her new math teacher, Mrs. Buccholz. Amy finds it “weird” that her Math 2 class is her favorite course, because she has always been “more of an English person.” But “having a math teacher who knows how math works is pretty cool.” At her old school, competent math teachers were nonexistent, and “if you didn’t get a tutor, you would fail [math] class.”

If you see Amy walking in the hallway, raising an animal in FFA, or swimming at Keough’s during swim team practice, be sure to say hello! And don’t forget, you can watch Amy perform alongside many other Broncos in Into the Woods, which opens March 17, 2018.