Oak Park High School can be defined in many words. The 19 sports programs OPHS offers may point to the word “athletic”. The 42 AP and honors courses that the school provides might lead to the words “academically rigorous”. The positive slew of passing percentages on AP tests serve as a testament to “hard work”. The driving force behind all these acclamations point to a trait that OPHS students are proud of: ambition.
Everybody embodies ambition in their own way, whether it’s striving to improve in an athletic perspective, taking rigorous courses or even getting to class first. It’s defined as a strong, eager desire to achieve a specific goal, and there’s no doubt that it’s a driving factor for success.
Ambition takes human form in senior Brandon Park as he navigates his final year at OPHS. From principal chair in the All State Band, featuring only the best musicians in the state of California, to accumulating one of the highest GPAs in OPHS, he’s not one to back down from any challenge.
“There’s a positive reinforcement with hard work and challenge,” Park said. “I want to continue to push myself and not be content with staying behind and taking things leisurely because while I could just take an easy class, I wouldn’t find myself enjoying it because I’d be wasting my time instead of challenging myself, which is the biggest reason why I go to school.”
After taking some of the hardest classes OPHS has to offer, such as AP Chemistry, Park has not only retained valuable knowledge but also takes the lessons he’s learned in classes like these to future AP and honor courses. Park explains his thought process when he faces a problem that he finds difficult.
“In general, my train of thought is that if I’m given a problem by a teacher, I’m going to assume that it’s solvable with the things that they’ve taught in class,” Park said. “So when I come across a problem that is difficult to solve, that’s a marker that tells me I need to master this concept more. It’s a signal to me that I have to try harder.”
Along with resiliency, Park also exhibits traits of self-discipline. During his time at Medea Creek Middle School, Park jumped at the opportunity to move forward in mathematics, learning the fundamentals of Algebra I a year earlier than the standard curriculum. At the time, it was encouragement from his parents that led him to make the decision to skip Pre-Algebra and challenge himself with a harder class. Now, he makes these decisions for himself in the pursuit of getting a good education beyond high school.
“One of the factors I push to achieve more is to aim for college and aim for pragmatic future success,” Park said. “It is established that if you take more rigorous classes, then colleges will appreciate your efforts more; you’ll have an easier time getting a better education and will have a better career path.”
With the goal of college in mind, Park reflects back on what lessons have guided him to where he is right now. He knows that staying calm and coming back from a hard test is what’s most important instead of pointless persistent panic. Park talks about his most recent experience with receiving a bad score and what he changed to improve.
“The most recent example would be AP U.S History, where the whole class got around a 50%.” Park said, “My immediate reaction is ‘that’s not good,’ but at the same time there are many more tests to come. [The test] was more textbook-reading based, rather than analysis, so I read the whole textbook through twice, and studied every single bullet point. I did a little better, I got a B if I remember correctly but it was still decently above the curve so that was a signal to me that I was on the right track.”
By self-imposing academic standards, he knows that he’s able to share both his defeats and victories with his parents without the criticism that many students would expect. With the strong support system of his family, he’s confident in pushing forward and striving for the next big goal.
“When I get a bad grade, I tell my parents because they already know I’m punishing myself for [the bad grade] so they don’t criticize me, they give me encouragement. They say ‘you can do better.’ I take that, and it motivates me to do better.”
Park’s ability to learn and grow in school has led to other opportunities outside of the classroom. His musical talents first started out in kindergarten playing the piano. He eventually moved towards the clarinet in the second semester of his third grade class at Oak Hills Elementary School, when a little van introduced a variety of instruments to the students.
Since then, he’s climbed his way to the top as first chair of the highest of the three bands at OPHS, first chair at All-State, a member of the Ventura County Honor Band, first chair of both the California State University-Northridge music program and the Colburn Community School program. He’s made several sacrifices to get this far, including quitting tennis and piano, but is happy with where the clarinet has brought him.
“Music morphed into another education for me,” Park said. “Clarinet is fun and even though it is a chore most of the time, it brings me a lot of joy. Music is like learning other subjects; it’s difficult at first but once you accomplish something that you weren’t able to do before, you get the same type of satisfaction you get from getting a good grade..”
With all the achievements he’s accrued over the years, he’s received numerous compliments directed towards his intelligence. His name is often accompanied by the scores on his tests, or the musical accomplishments that make him stand out from the crowd. Unlike most people who deflect affirmation, Park has learned to accept praise and move on.
“[It’s nice to get praise, but] it’s just another compliment.” Park said, “It’s like telling someone in track, ‘you’re fast,’ or telling someone who cares about their appearance, ‘you look nice.’ It’s a modifier that isn’t necessarily objective. It’s not something that I take to mean as a part of my character. Different people have different kinds of intelligence, so you can’t say X person is smarter than Y person.”
Wrapping up his time at high school, Park has learned the importance of self-discipline, learning how to cut back on social media and video games when classes get hard, explored all that OPHS has to offer, showing interest in pursuing a career in medicine and most importantly, Park has learned the significance of balance.
“A big problem that I face is that I often place too much emphasis on my future, and a lot of the time I think that if I don’t get a good grade it will impact my future. So what I have to say as advice to myself that I probably won’t follow is that I have to be more accepting of the fact that I’ll end up in a decent place no matter what happens in high school.”
By successfully balancing out his work, sleep and relaxation schedule, he’s learned that it’s important to enjoy what life has to offer.
“It’s valuable to experience school life so you don’t dedicate your entire being to the acquisition of information,” Park said. “Because at the same time it’s important to enjoy your high school years and make memories because those are also things that you can’t come back to. It’s important to live in the moment and work for yourself in the moment even when you’re in school working for your future.”
