This year’s Cochrane High School valedictorian excelled academically and immersed herself in music, soccer, and rugby on campus – and even found time for fun with ultimate frisbee.
In conversation with the multi-talented, humble 17-year-old valedictorian Hannah Tas, the impression is high school wasn’t particularly difficult for her, and she seems to have loved the four years she spent at Cochrane High.
“It’s an honour, but I'm just a student,” she said.
And that, coincidentally, is as close as she comes to offering advice to her fellow grads, and the core of what she learned in high school: find something you love.
Or, as the much-cited cliché goes, “Find something you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
The only challenge left for Tas as she gets set to pack up and head off to the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island is to decide which of her many interests will become her focus. For now, she said she’s going into university with an open mind.
UVic ranked as Canada’s top comprehensive university in the 2022 Maclean’s rankings, a distinction it shared with another B.C school – Simon Fraser University. UVic is recognized for its psychology program, which is also one of Tas’s favoured subject areas.
“I think first year [is meant to] lay the foundation and go from there,” she said.
Biology was a favourite subject while she was at Cochrane High, and she added “Miss Bennett is an amazing teacher.”
“We genetically modified the DNA of E coli cells to make them glow,” she said. “It was really, really cool.”
She’s not agonizing over getting too cerebral in her graduation night speech on June 28, when Cochrane High holds its convocation ceremony.
“I realized it doesn't really matter what words I speak – they’re not going to remember,” she said. “But if I make them feel something, that can have a lasting impact.”
One of her lasting memories of what’s really important in life is something Tas learned in high school. She described it as the joy that comes from creating something that means something to you and sharing it with others.
For someone who has lived her entire life in the same house within walking distance of school, getting set to travel to a new city and a new province didn’t sound intimidating.
She said she has a close family, and admits she will miss her little brother Thomas. But it also sounds like she can’t wait to see what the future holds.
One of Tas’s other favourite subjects was social studies, which included a study of politics, including liberalism.
She admits to looking forward to moving from a mostly conservative province to a predominantly more liberal environment.
“I'm quite excited about that,” she said.
Tas hiked the challenging Juan de Fuca Trail on the west coast of Vancouver Island with her family a couple of years ago, and looks forward to exploring more of B.C.
“Being in the outdoors, that's really important to me and my family,” she said.
