Sometimes, when you go looking for one thing, you encounter something else you weren’t expecting. That’s the easiest way to explain how I met Anna Tulley. I had gone into the restaurant she works at, The CoffeeHouse and Deli at 114 E Beaufort St. in Uptown to ask about something I thought would make a good story.

When I told her I was with The Normalite, her reply was a nice surprise, particularly coming from a high school student: “Oh, I love The Normalite!” she said. Most of our readers are of a certain age, but high school students, I’m pretty sure, aren’t counted among our regular demographic.

“I like to stay updated about current events, especially in town, because I know it affects my everyday life, or I can bring it up in a conversation,” explained Anna, a senior at University High School.

And the truth is, when I didn’t find what I was originally looking for to write about at The CoffeeHouse, I left. But perhaps it was knowing we had at least one teen reader that made me circle back to find out more about Anna. Her grandmother, Mary Ann Tulley, bought Anna’s family the subscription, adding to their resources of information. “It’s really special to go through your paper and read about people from around town,” Anna said.

But reading our weekly dose of what’s going on in town isn’t all Anna is into. She also runs Cross Country and is on the Pioneers’ girls’ Soccer team.

“I actually didn’t start playing Soccer until my sophomore year and I had never played it up until then,” she explained. “But all my friends were on the Soccer team, so I decided to go out for it and see what happens. It was a great experience during my first year.” She started on the junior varsity squad and quickly showed promise that prompted her coaches to move her to varsity.

In a world where we older folks think kids are tuned out listening to their music on their devices, Anna said, in the circle of friends she runs around with, those kids are “sometimes more up to date than I am, just because they care about what’s going on.”

Anna has what some could find a unique career goal: She wants to spend her working life employed in a museum of some type. She wants to, as the ultimate goal moving up the career ladder, be able to do this at a museum in Washington, D. C. “Museums are such a positive learning atmosphere that that’s where I want to be for the rest of my life,” Anna said. “I want to do something where I get to talk to people.”

Her interest in current events led Anna to help found a group at U-High called SAGE – Student Advocates for Global Education. “We discuss educational topics around the world and how they relate to us,” Anna explained.

Here’s hoping Anna achieves her goal so she can teach others from whatever museum where she becomes employed. And regardless of where she lands, we here at The Normalite will be happy to keep a subscription reserved in her name.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2018 at 3:04 pm and is filed under The Normalite. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.