Valedictorian Paige Martin

On many early mornings during the pandemic, valedictorian Paige Martin would find herself walking through her local park to watch the sunrise. 

After weeks of sitting in front of a bright screen for nine-hour days — learning from monotonous Zoom classes during the school day, participating in altered digital extracurricular activities after, and laboring over college applications through the night — Martin found it necessary to build some balance into her life. 

“COVID was both an evil and a blessing for me,” Martin said.

“Spending all that time working on college apps, plus going on Zoom for four classes a day or three classes a day has been exhausting, I won’t lie,” Martin continued. However, “there was a point, probably around the time second semester started, where I finally realized, I don’t think this has to be my everything,” she said. 

After this realization, “I was able to take this time in COVID to physically take myself away from the computer, make that conscious decision to step away and do something else,” Martin said. “I think that is what saved me.”

Of all the memories and lessons that make up Martin’s high school experience, the ones that stand out most are the experiences that encouraged her to spend more time strolling through the park during sunrise, or blasting music on drives with her friends. Rather than giving her all to every activity and class she was involved in, Martin is grateful to have learned how to create a balance. 

“I’ve just learned not to stress about things too much,” she said, “and not to put too much stock in every single thing that I’m doing.”

Martin’s journey to find this balance has been marked by achievements in both extracurriculars and academics.

Through founding the Hands for Hearts club, participating in volleyball and tennis, and becoming involved in Oregon Health and Science University’s Partnership for Scientific Inquiry program, Martin has derived fulfillment from her education while managing to maintain stability in her life.

During her junior year, Martin created the Hands for Hearts club to instruct students and members of the La Salle community on CPR and other lifesaving techniques. As part of her work for this club, she received La Salle’s Dare to Dream grant, which allowed her to purchase equipment to aid the training sessions. Martin hopes to bring this club to college, as it was “a pretty cool project to work on,” she said.

Martin also participated in three years of volleyball at La Salle, and tried tennis for a few weeks during her junior year, just before the season was canceled due to the pandemic. Although Martin had never played tennis previous to the spring of her junior year, “it was honestly some of the most fun practices I’ve ever been to on any sports team ever,” she said. 

This year, Martin was encouraged by her counselor to participate in the Partnership for Scientific Inquiry Program with OHSU. As part of this program, Martin attended weekly sessions, listening to various types of doctors give presentations, and reading through medical journals with other student participants. 

“It was enlightening to hear from these doctors of all different professions and all different perspectives,” she said. “Everyone was just there to learn and grow together.”

Martin has also taken a variety of advanced courses while at La Salle, and has been able to develop close relationships with many teachers. 

Completing AP Spanish V this year, Martin has had both Ms. Lisa Moran and Ms. Amy Gantt as Spanish teachers at La Salle, and said she has loved every minute of her experience in language classes.

AP Spanish V was enriching for Martin because “it’s a small class,” she said. “It’s a class where everyone can work on more of your conversational skills, and more of your cultural awareness skills, too.”

Martin also took AP Chemistry with Mr. Matt Owen this year. “AP Chemistry has been pretty tough, but it’s also been one of the most rewarding classes,” she said. “Seeing, ‘Hey, I’ve made it to the end of the year, we’re there, we made it,’ has been really, really rewarding in that class.”

Throughout all of the classes Martin has taken, she said that “there’s so many teachers who have impacted me at La Salle.” 

“They’ve all impacted me in some sort of way, to the point where that’s what I’m most grateful for at La Salle, is the fact that I’ve had so many classes and so many teachers who have impacted me so close to heart,” she said.

Taking with her many cherished experiences and lessons from teachers, courses, and extracurriculars, Martin will attend Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon next year as a Stamps Scholar, receiving tuition, fees, and room and board as part of the most prestigious and generous undergraduate scholarship offered by the university.

At UO, Martin plans to major in Biology, minor in Psychology, and possibly also minor in Spanish. 

As a future career goal, Martin has “settled on either being a pediatric dermatologist or a physiatrist, and I’m very much leaning towards being a pediatric dermatologist,” she said. Martin has seen multiple dermatologists for skin conditions she has struggled with. “I think what they’ve done for me, I kind of want to do back for other kids my age who have skin conditions, who have to live with that,” she said.

Martin’s experience with the Partnership for Scientific Inquiry program has also played a role in encouraging her to pursue a career in biology. In addition to listening to medical professionals as part of the program, she also wrote a research paper on genetic diversity in skin conditions for the PSI program.

Martin not only learned the importance of “equitable treatment instead of equal treatment” from writing her research paper, but she was also driven to consider partaking in more biological research projects sometime in the future.

Once in college, Martin expects that she will return to her understanding of the importance of not putting “too much stock” in all of the activities that she participates in, she said.

With plans to complete medical school after graduating college, Martin has many years of education ahead of her. “The next kind of big stuff that I’m predicting at the moment is that it never ends — it feels like it never ends,” she said. “Now I’ve got to start the whole cycle again for the next four years, and then another four years after that in medical school.”

“You have to take in that there is going to be an endgame, there is a purpose to all of this madness,” she said. “There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and I think that’s definitely going to help with my study habits, and then also just trying to gauge when it’s time to take a mental health break, or when it’s time to maybe just push a little harder to get one or two more assignments done.”

In further reflection of her high school experience, Martin emphasized that “it’s not all just about taking the most AP classes and getting the best grades, it’s about actually trying to find value in your academic experience,” she said. “We’re here for a reason, and you might as well put it to good use.”

Martin thinks she could summarize her entire experience at La Salle by saying, “it was challenging, but rewarding in the end. And not because of the grades that you get on a test, but because you can see the fact that this was challenging, and I got through it,” she said. “I think pretty much everyone in the school can say that too, and no matter what classes they’re taking, no matter what their study habits are — we all made it.”