A Valpo Life in the Spotlight: Samantha Williams

A Valpo Life in the Spotlight: Samantha Williams

Samantha Williams, a career-driven young adult, was born in Valparaiso and attended Boone Grove High School through her sophomore year. However, Williams knows exactly what she wants to pursue as a career and was given the opportunity to take more classes that focused just on that, which is why she decided to finish her high school education at Indiana Academy.

“The Indiana Academy is for science, mathematics, and humanities. It is located on the Ball State University campus, so almost all of our courses are AP, Dual Credit, and Honors,” Williams said.

Indiana Academy is nationally ranked for being one of the best high schools and offers accelerated classes for those who want to pursue science, mathematics, and humanities, which is what Williams wanted and needed.

“They have a ton more science classes, which is actually what I am going into. This semester I am taking three science courses, whereas in a public high school I would only be able to take one, maybe two,” she said.

She is already planning on what she wants to study in college and has ideas on where she wants to go.

“I would like to be a toxicology lobbyist. Toxicology meaning environmental chemistry and lobbyist implies proposing bills in law. I am looking at attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison, but may end up staying in the state of Indiana for my undergraduate degree,” Williams said.

Williams has already started to get her foot in the door with the law side of things. She and a handful of other students at Indiana Academy were invited to visit the Indiana State House to be a page for the day.

“I pretty much got to live the day in the life of an Indiana State Senator,” she said. “We got to sit in the Senators’ chairs and perform a mock bill and we got to propose a bill that could be brought up in the Senate. We went through the pros and cons of the bill, and got to experience what it would be like in that situation.”

Williams and the group of students then got to watch a committee to see how it is done professionally. The group also met up with a few of the state senators and chatted with them for a little bit.

“Some of us got to meet with our senators for only a few minutes and they each told us about themselves and what they did at the Indiana State House, which was very interesting,” Williams said.

She also got the chance to chat with Senator Ed Charbonneau, who is the environmental chair, which was interesting to Williams because she is interested in pursuing a career that focuses on just that.

“As a toxicology lobbyist, I will have to propose bills and convince senators to make amendments in my favor to help better the environment,” she explained. “Senator Charbonneau deals with a lot of the environmental affairs, so it was interesting hearing what he does and the kind of pressure he has when he talks about environmental affairs.”

“Chatting with the senators and performing a mock bill was honestly an experience that I would not have gotten outside of the page program,” she said.

In addition to taking advanced classes at the Indiana Academy, she is involved in a few extracurricular activities to keep herself extra busy.

“I am involved in Science Olympiad and Envirothon, both of which have made it to the state competition this year. I am also on the English Academic Team, where I am the team captain,” she said. “Competition for the English Academic Team starts in April.”

Outside of her schoolwork and extracurricular activities, she enjoys visiting zoos to see all of the wild animals and camping with her younger sister, Jordan when she has breaks from school.