With BioScience, Buena cheerleading, PAAC, Youth and Government, and still having time for friends, Emily Rath could be considered a busy teenager. Rath is a Foothill alumna who graduated in 2012. She experienced the change from Myspace to Facebook, the Lady Gaga phase, and the disastrous Foothill senior prank.
As a sophomore, Rath experienced her favorite memory at Foothill, the dead fish incident. The Class of 2010 put a pool full of fish in the middle of the quad area. The point of this prank was to raise money by throwing coins in the pool for a student at Foothill named “Victor, who unfortunately passed away from cancer,” Rath said, “But they messed up the pH balance in the water so all the fish were dead.”
Not only were the students having a laugh over this funny situation, but Rath recalls social sciences teacher Cherie Eulau poking fun at it, too. When the seniors came to Mrs. Eulau’s class, she “put goldfish all over their desks, like the snack, as a joke,”
“That was one of the bests – that was really funny, the whole situation,” Rath laughs.
Being an educator, Rath experiences what does and doesn’t make a teacher great, everyday and she says Eulau “has checked everything off on the list,” said Rath. Eulau stood out during Rath’s high school experience because “I felt like she really got to know me personally” and “she did a lot of really creative things,” Rath expressed. “She made me excited about learning.”
BioScience taught Rath more than one thing, this including that she did not want to work in the medical field when she grew older. In high school, Rath had no clue what she wanted to do when she grew up. “I joined [BioScience] because I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” which in an indirect way, lead her to a job she cherishes today; teaching.
When Rath left high school, she expected to grow up overnight. Senior year, she thought that “I would just go to college and know what I wanted to be when I grew up,” but this was not the case for her. After high school, Rath attended the University of Redlands as a psychology major and later figured out she wanted to become a teacher.
“It’s a lot of trial and error and you go in thinking you are more adult than you probably are,” Rath said while talking about how over the years of high school you grow as a person, and that the same philosophy applies for college. Because of her maturity over the years, Rath figured out her career path. Now, Rath works for Ojai Unified and is credentialed for elementary school. In addition, she is doing an online grad program through USC.
Foothills competitive atmosphere has not changed since Rath attended high school. Like most high school students, it is natural to compare yourself to other students, and nothing was different for Rath. As a student, “I was really hard on myself and competitive with my peers,” Rath said. “I was really stressed out in school all the time and was a really anxious person.” This is due to the high pressure for students this day in age to be the best. If Rath could go back in time, she would tell herself to “enjoy the ride.”
Rath’s advice to all students today is to “hug your pets, hug your parents,” and “know that your teachers are totally on your side and they are amazing resources and are so smart.”
