THANK YOU! I am going to Vermont!

I AM BEYOND EXCITED! I AM GOING TO VERMONT! Thank you all for all your help and support, and encouraging words. It is both scary and exciting. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!! I will be sure to share some pics.

UPDATE: I am beyond thankful to ALL OF YOU! Because of you, I can reduce my goal to $4000, and we are more than halfway through with a couple of days left to the end!

Hi! I am Hisami Oliva, a junior at High Tech High Media Arts, and I want to attend The Mountain School of Milton Academy in Vermont. I need your help!

The Mountain School is a program in which 45 students each semester are selected from a nationwide pool of applicants to spend half of their junior year enriched in a rural-Vermont setting while attending to farm duties and rigorous academic expectations. I was lucky enough to be among those 45 students selected and accepted their offer.

Born in San Diego, in Oceanside, I currently live in La Mesa. I will be starting the 11th grade this fall with a (weighted) GPA of 4.0. I am involved in many activities at school, such as the community fridge for food justice and our campus girl-empowering club GirlUp! I have been a student ambassador for the school and participated in poetry readings with the creative writing club HTHCreates; in the past, I was interviewed as part of the High Tech High system for the NIVOZ foundation in the Netherlands. I grew up in a single-parent household; my birth mother is of Japanese ancestry, and my father, with whom I live, is Mexican. I also live with my stepmom, a fantastic lady from the midwest! I am an avid musician and have published one song under the stage name Laymans, and I am working on new material over the summer.

I am not boasting, but I want to make sure you know my commitment to my studies, community, and generally as a well-rounded American. That is why I am always interested in different opportunities available. My teachers seem to agree with me since they suggest things for me to do; this is one such thing.

For the 2022-23 academic year, The Mountain School’s tuition and room and board come to $32,975. I applied and received a scholarship that reduced my obligation to $6,140, not including travel. I am already very grateful for the financial aid I’ve been rewarded, but it still does not fall within my family’s feasible financial budget. While it is a great opportunity, I understand my family and my financial limitations, and I am ok not going, but in this day and age of social media crowdfunding, I thought, “why not give it a go?” I am fundraising for that balance of the bill plus travel expenses; my goal is $7000 by August 1, 2022.

If you decide you’d like to help me, thank you very sincerely! I can put you in contact with my parents and also with my High Tech High community in case you want to corroborate any information or have any questions about all of this. I can be reached here if you have any questions about this; I will get back to you as soon as possible.

If I end up going, I will be setting up a Facebook page for this adventure for you to follow my progress there. I know this was a long note; if you got here, THANK YOU for your time and thank you very much for your consideration :)

With gratitude,

Hisami Oliva