MCHS Valedictorians: Heather Hedges

Heather Hedges had a full plate in high school: she debated humanitarian aid, donated scrapbooks with encouraging letters to hospital patients and received her Girl Scouts Gold Award. Now, she's headed to Georgetown in the fall and hopes to study abroad in Latin America.

Patch: What college are you attending?

Hedges: I'm going to Georgetown in Washington D.C., and I'm studying international relations. I want to go into foreign relations.

Patch: How did you first get interested in foreign affairs?

Hedges: I have been involved in a Model UN program. We went to Georgetown in a conference sophomore year. I debated about anything from peacekeeping to the legal rights of patents around the world. I debated about humanitarian aid or refugee camps, even international law on patents on medicine. What really interested me is that everything is so interconnected, and you can't really solve one problem without fixing another issue. You learn all these things that I would never have learned in a high school class.

Patch: What other activities were you involved in beside Model UN?

Hedges: I've been in Girl Scouts since I've been in kindergarten. During the summer of sophomore year to junior year, I did my Gold Award project. I worked with the UCLA pediatric development to get 250 kids' DVDs, and I did an event where all people who attended wrote letters to cancer patients. I collected over 120 of those, put them in 20 scrapbooks with activity games and letters and delivered them to individual patients so they can look at them in the hospital. I also donated 250 Beanie Babies to the hospital.

Patch: Why did you decide to do this kind of project?

Hedges: I like working with kids and I really wanted to do something service-related. It was really important to me service-wise.

Patch: Moving across the country to the East Coast is a huge step. What are you going to miss the most about your family?

Hedges: My whole family lives in Manhattan Beach. Family is a huge thing for me. Going away is really tough because my family is so close, especially my mom and my sister. They're going to be so strong for me. Now [that] I'm getting out of Manhattan Beach and actually on a broader scale, I'm going to be able to study abroad. It's definitely going to give me a wider variety of experiences to pull from.

Patch: Where would you want to study abroad?

Hedges: I'd really like to go somewhere in Latin America. I'm really interested in Spanish. My dream job would be to work with the UN or with a nonprofit organization in Latin America, so being able to go there even before I graduate [from college] would be amazing.