Salutatorian Sam Luft

Salutatorian Sam Luft didn’t start learning English — reading, writing, and speaking conventions — until second grade, when the Spanish international school he attended, Chiquitos School, shut down and he started at Holy Family Catholic School.

At Chiquitos, his school days had been entirely in Spanish, so “I could speak English, but not very well,” Luft said. He suspects that perhaps that’s why, years later, English was the most challenging subject for him throughout high school.

“It’s really difficult for me,” Luft said. “I have to put a lot more effort into English than I do any other class.”

And yet, English is still one of his favorite subjects — along with Spanish, computer science, calculus, physics, and world religions.

“I enjoy school,” he said. “I don’t really think I have a favorite class… I really like courses that I can take, then afterwards, be able to identify somewhere where I can apply them. So, it needs to be something that I can see myself using practically — computer science is a good example of that.”

As for the subjects that he doesn’t enjoy as much, he doesn’t bother with taking advanced classes or stressing over tests and projects. While some students might try to cram their schedules with as many AP and honors courses as possible, aiming for the GPA boost provided by the higher levels of classes, Luft built his course schedule based on what interested and challenged him, not what scored him the most points in the academic system.

“I kind of made a rule for myself that I would take the courses that I actually enjoyed,” he said. “I didn’t take any AP history courses, because I generally don’t like them… I don’t see it as something I will use in the future. It’s definitely something useful, but it’s not something I enjoy doing.”

For Luft, being good at something isn’t a requirement for liking it. That’s why, even though he considers himself “bad at English,” he still enjoys the class — instead of a discouragement, he sees his room for improvement as a “challenge,” he said.

Like English, another thing that Luft enjoys, but said he isn’t the best at, is running. Though he isn’t the fastest, running became a regular part of his schedule during quarantine, and he came to enjoy it — so much so that he joined the cross country team during his senior year, participating in La Salle athletics for the first time.

His interest in running was sustained not so much by a motivation for fitness, Luft said, but by a routine with his dog and by his love for burritos. Though burritos and running aren’t typically associated with one another, they are for Luft — he frequently runs to his favorite Mexican cart, Taco Express, where he gets two burritos — one for himself, and one for his dog, Leo.

“I really sucked at running, but I liked running to my local food cart,” Luft said. So, he thought, “‘Hey, I kind of enjoy this,’” he said. “‘Maybe I could do a sport.’ So it was like my senior year experiment — I did cross country, and I enjoyed that.”

He said that participating in the sport through La Salle helped him improve.

“I definitely got better during cross country,” Luft said. “I was very slow at the beginning, and then I got faster. And then after [the season] ended, I kept on doing the burrito run, and I’m back to where I started.”

In addition to cross country, Luft participated in the robotics club at La Salle during his sophomore, junior, and senior years.

Luft likes robotics club because “it’s being able to collaborate with a bunch of people who like STEM, and then making a final project at the end,” he said. “That’s really fun.”

Luft credits his interest in robotics, as well as his overarching affinity for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), to two aspects of his younger years: Legos, and his middle school math teacher.

Luft said he remembers playing with Legos for hours on end as a child, which he said was the start of his interest in engineering.

“Legos are pretty awesome,” Luft said, recalling his younger years of Lego play with his childhood friend, La Salle senior Xavier Santiago. “Xavier and I would sink at least four hours looking through Lego buckets together, and that’s what we constituted as a playdate.”

Luft no longer plays with Legos, trading them in for more complex hardware in the robotics club and intricate software in his Advanced Topics Computer Science class. Still, he said, “Legos are timeless.”

“I don’t [still play with them], but I love them,” Luft said. “My kids are going to have all of my old Legos. My dad gave me his old Legos, I’m going to give my kids my old Legos — that’s generations worth of Legos.”

Math, meanwhile, was not Luft’s strong suit as a younger student. But his prowess and interest in the subject shifted with the help of his math teacher in middle school, Ms. Mary Thatcher.

“I sucked at math in elementary school,” Luft said. “And in middle school, I would get C’s and D’s on all my tests. And then, I’d go to Ms. Thatcher after school for, like, an hour and a half every single day after school, and she would help me with math. She was so dedicated to me and everyone else.”

By the time he finished middle school and entered high school, Luft had developed a true interest in STEM subjects, thanks largely to the support he received from Ms. Thatcher.

“She encouraged me, even though I wasn’t very good at math,” Luft said. “Her enthusiasm for it sort of affected my own enthusiasm, and I grew to really like it.”

Now, Luft is headed to Oregon State University to major in civil engineering. He looks forward to continuing his education, eventually getting experience with internships and making connections with professors who, like Ms. Thatcher, are enthusiastic about the subjects they teach.

“It’s a good feeling, going to Oregon State next year,” Luft said, “I’m excited to narrow the focus to just STEM, and then narrow that even further to engineering.”

Though Luft will focus more on STEM topics than on liberal arts, he joked, “I probably could use a couple more English classes… I recognize that I need to get better at English.”

Whether or not he ends up expanding his reading and writing studies, Luft will continue to take courses and pursue paths based on what he enjoys rather than what might embellish his academic record — and, he would recommend others do the same.

“Don’t be overly concerned about your grades, and just take the classes that you like,” he said. “And hey, if you do well in them, that’s a bonus. But at the end of the day, if you’re able to pass all those courses, if you’re not overly concerned about where you go to college, I wouldn’t stress about it too much.”