Courtesy of Madison Thomsen
Senior Photo: Madison Thomsen

Profile on IB Diploma students – Jon Haisfield, Madison Thomsen, Climary Sanchez

This is the first of an article series featuring all IB Diploma students:

Jon Haisfield, Madison Thomsen, and Climary Sanchez, among others, are graduating as the IB Diploma Class of 2020. They have been working hard throughout their junior and senior years at AHS, and that time is coming to an end.

These students have overcome challenges throughout their IB Diploma careers, and the tests they had worked for throughout the two years was cancelled due to COVID-19. Although these things they have been working for have been cancelled or moved to being virtual, they were able to find bright sides, and finish their year on a strong note.

Madison Thomsen
Madison Thomsen has lived in Aspen her whole life. She is interested in psychology and hopes to one day be a psychiatrist, and to open her own practice. Thomsen will be attending the University of Colorado Boulder in the fall, majoring in psychology.

Thomsen knew she wanted to do IB Diploma because she had heard it would prepare her for college better than anything else. It was important for her to focus on her academics throughout high school and IB Diploma seemed like an effective way to do so. She also felt confident that she had a support system in place throughout the journey.

For Thomsen, the best part of IB Diploma was the TOK class. She believes it had a lot of interesting information that they learned, but she also believes it was nice to have the class with the other kids also doing the IB Diploma. This was helpful for her because she knew she always had people going through the same things as her.

Climary Sanchez
Climary Sanchez is the only native Spanish speaker in the IB Diploma Class of 2020, though she decided to take IB French. She has used the same pencil box since 5th grade because it is sentimental to her. Throughout her high school career, she played basketball and volleyball. Sanchez is the last in her family to graduate from AHS after four years in a row of graduations. She applied to 19 colleges and then got a full ride to the University of Notre Dame with the QuestBridge Scholarship, where she will attend in the fall.

Sanchez had already decided to take all IB classes that would fall into the “IB Diploma curriculum” except for English, as she didn’t want to take English. On the last day of school of her sophomore year, she said “why not” since it was only one extra class. She knew she would have to do extra work but she was up for the challenge.

Sanchez believes the hardest part of her IB Diploma experience was the testing. Having to memorize so much information for the semester finals was tough on her. She also didn’t enjoy that there sometimes was no structure for some IB related assignments because they want students to create their own original pieces, which was difficult for her because the structure was what she was used to.

Jon Haisfield
Jon Haisfield played three sports throughout his high school career: baseball, football, and basketball. Haisfield loves to ski, fish, and hang out with his friends on weekends. Haisfield has a little brother who will be a rising junior. He was born and raised in Aspen, and has been in the school district his whole life. He will be attending the University of Michigan in the fall, majoring in business.

Haisfield joined IB Diploma because he wanted to push himself academically, and figured taking the diploma was the best way to do so. His favorite classes in the program are business, biology, and English. The IB Diploma program has helped Haisfield find a balance between academics and social life, which he finds is important for his next four years.

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