POULSBO — Liz Leness isn’t about to stop learning just because school is out.
She and her classmates at West Sound Academy took their final high school exams last week, and they celebrated with caps and gowns Thursday night. But Leness believes her out-of-school lessons carry just as much weight as what she’s learned in the classroom.
“The experiences you have outside of school, whether it be traveling or jobs or anything … they harden you a little bit,” Leness said. “If you have a hard situation that you’re going through, it forces you to grow up a little bit.”
Leness has seen herself mature in her time at West Sound Academy. She has done so with the support of a close-knit group of 10 classmates.
The Bainbridge Island resident came to the school five years ago, as an eighth-grader, and found a connection to the curriculum and the familial setting. The following summer, she was diagnosed with diabetes.
“At first it was kind of hard,” she said. “But my friends were all really interested in how it affected me. My friends were really supportive, my family was really supportive.”
Leness worked around her Seattle doctor visits to keep up with her cello and piano lessons, as well as regular school commitments. But a new challenge lies ahead on the way to college. Leness, like many of her classmates, will travel out of state for college, to a small, liberal arts university.
“I think the transition into college and into a different state will be kind of hard,” she said, “because everything has been here. And we’re going to have to stretch and move things there.”
Leness is confident she can overcome any challenges she encounters. Life hasn’t been terribly tough and she knows the people around her will continue to be there for her as, like her classmates, she moves out into the “real world.” She and her friends take with them the lessons they’ve learned at West Sound.
“It’s not really the knowledge that I’ve learned, it’s how I’ve learned it and how I can take that information and apply it to my life,” Leness said. “And I think that here, at West Sound, I’ve built a really strong work ethic. At a small school, you can’t tiptoe around assignments. I think it’s really helped me organize myself as a student, and in life outside of school.”
