Before arriving at La Salle, sophomore Maxwell Elliott spent his formative years at Franciscan Montessori Earth School, having attended there for both elementary and middle school.

“I feel like that’s shaped me a lot,” he said. “It’s a very small community, so you know everybody, and you have classes with everybody, and I feel like that school is very focused on independent learning, and that’s influenced how I’ve come to learn different topics.”

Elliott chose to attend La Salle because of his brother, Roman Elliott, who graduated a year before he began attending. Elliott said he admires his brother’s intelligence and wanted to follow in his footsteps.

“He drove me to be a better person because he inspired me in ways that others kind of can’t,” Elliott said.

According to Elliott, at La Salle, and throughout his entire life, his favorite subject has been math. Currently one of his favorite — and more challenging — classes is AP Calculus AB, taught by Math Department Chair Ms. Kathleen Jahn, who was also his former middle school math teacher.

“Coming into this class, it was kind of nice to see her again, and I also really enjoy her teaching style, so I feel like it made the transition to a harder class way easier for me,” he said.

In the future, Elliott is planning to continue focusing on math in college before applying it in a potential career. He is particularly interested in engineering, especially if it involves airplanes.

“The summer before coming to La Salle, I got a chance to fly a plane with a program, and I didn’t actually land or take off or anything like that, but I was given the controls for 15 minutes in the air, and it was really fun,” he said. “I’ve had an interest in planes since then.”

Outside of math, the teacher Elliott said has had the greatest impact on his life is English Department Chair Mr. Greg Larson.

“I came into his class very afraid of what was going to happen, and I feel like I hadn’t really faced any serious challenges other than Honors Algebra 2,” he said. “After taking his class, I feel like I can confidently say that I’ve grown as a student and somebody who seeks challenges.”

Throughout his time at La Salle, Elliott has taken several electives, including Game Design, Intro to Computer Science, and Robotics; however, he enjoyed the Electronic Music 1 elective he took during the first semester of his sophomore year the most of any, and he continues to make digital music in his free time, he said.

Beyond academics, Elliott spends his time reading, listening to music, and playing and coding video games. His favorite book he has read recently is “Divergent,” by Veronica Roth, and as of right now, he said he has coded two or three video games and is currently working on another.

“I’m currently making a platformer that will hopefully resemble something like ‘Celeste’ — that’s a video game that I play a lot,” he said.

For college, Elliott tentatively hopes to once again follow in the footsteps of his brother and apply his passion for math and engineering at Oregon State University, though it’s not set in stone.

“If another college really calls my name, I would be fine with going out of state,” he said.

Elliott also enjoys traveling, saying he would be interested in visiting certain regions of Europe in the future, such as Greece or Rome.

“I’ve been to Europe before, and I just love everything about Europe,” he said. “It’s such a cool place. Their food is great. Their transportation is also pretty good — compared to ours, at least … It’s fun to travel.”