“Don’t get caught up on the small things,” Jonathan Ebenezer, Class of 2019, said.

Ebenezer is now a student at Cornell University where he is majoring in biology and minoring in biomedical engineering and archaeology. 

During his time at Lafayette, Ebenezer was active in many different clubs. He was involved with the Lafayette Science Council (LSC), Speech and Debate, Model UN, Key Club and National Honor Society. With all this involvement in high school, he said that it helped him learn the importance of pursuing activities and hobbies in college.

“Continuing interest [in hobbies] is so important because in college during the first semester I joined Debate and I dropped off the wagon because I got really busy. That’s probably one of the biggest regrets I had about college. I eventually went back to Debate and I’ve been more involved recently,” Ebenezer said. “Continuing interests help you stay connected to things you’ve gotten good at in high school or things that you’ve enjoyed in high school, but also allows you to have an escape from the day.”

Ebenezer said he advises seniors to prepare for the transition from high school to college, and one of his main takeaways is the understanding that classes will be so much different.

“You need to take [college] seriously in the beginning because it’s going to be a really big jump from high school to college. What worked in high school won’t work in college at all, it’s really different,” he said. “One thing I didn’t realize when I went to college is classes in high school are very broad, but classes in college are very specific. I looked up if there was a European history class, but there was no such thing. There are only history classes for specific time periods and countries.”

This eventually lead to Ebenezer finding another passion in archaeology.

“I was going through all the classes and I didn’t realize I could take something different and I saw ancient Egyptian civilization. I thought I wouldn’t ever be able to learn that if it wasn’t for being in college,” Ebenezer said. “I had seven science classes and it was really difficult to not have anything other than science at all times. In high school, it sounds great not having to take an English class, but in college, you maybe want a break from science classes. This year I was looking forward to that and now I have a break in my schedule with my Egyptomania class.”

After looking back on his years at Lafayette, Ebenezer said he doesn’t recommend unnecessarily stressing. 

“I took a lot of things really seriously,” he said. “What’s more important is focusing on yourself as a person more holistically and not necessarily worrying about so many individual things.”