Ayla Besemer: “Happiness isn’t mutually exclusive with success”
AYLA BESEMER is a bright and passionate alum of OHS. She attends Yale currently as a sophomore. Ayla graduated in 2015 after four years with the OHS. She attended all throughout high school, starting freshman year.
Her two stand-out experiential characteristics include traveling on a boat and storytelling. Growing up on a boat from ages eleven to eighteen is an integral part to her identity and has impacted many aspects of her life. She learned responsibility by being out at sea and a sense of mortality due to being the only boat in hundreds of miles during large storms. It also gave her the chance to develop independently from her peers: “I could wear my Star Trek costume around.” Ayla did not have the same limitations that come along with main land life and peer pressure. OHS also provided her this opportunity to develop independently. Her fellow students did not box her in, able to become the “'boat girl,' mega-nerd, journalist--[she] could be anything.” She also feels the need to be in motion constantly because of her time on the boat, citing examples of getting on trains to New York and taking a break to go to the beach as ways to imitate the constant motion of boat life. She had never stayed in one place for more than a month until she transitioned to college.
Ayla on her boat during senior year, in front of Margerie Glacier.
One of her passions is the art of storytelling. Growing up, she had written stories, sometimes with herself as a character. She liked American Girl Dolls and Little House on the Prairie as a child because of the stories she could create and absorb. Now, Ayla is discovering that she wants to tell stories through journalism and is part of the Yale Daily News. She remembers listening to a journalist speak during her freshman year, calling her parents afterwards in tears, crying, “I finally found something I’m passionate about.”
She credits OHS’s academic rigor in her transition to college, claiming that, in no offense to Yale, “college is kind of a let down.” She attributes that to the incredible academics at OHS and the constant engagement with OHS teachers as compared to those at Yale. OHS prepared her for the seminars and reading assignments that college brought, finding many similarities between courses and professors at both Yale and the OHS, even comparing her double major in History of Science and Medicine and Religious Studies to her HSC class at OHS, and how claiming that one particular "history seminar reminds [her] of CRA." During sophomore year, she did not particularly love the class because of the predominant focus on white western men, but it guided her strong appreciation of philosophy.
Ayla scuba-diving in Iceland, between the tectonic plates of Eurasia and North America.
Ayla also feels that OHS prepared her well socially due to OHS' great community building. She believes that because friendships are online and at a distance, there is no time for awkwardness when you meet in person and therefore practically become best friends immediately. Interestingly, she is closer to OHS students now then she was in high school.
If she could go back and change one thing, Ayla thinks she would have appreciated OHS more at the time. She had less pressure senior year because of acceptance to Yale through early action, which allowed her time to focus and enjoy six classes her second semester. She wishes she had this ability to truly appreciate classes earlier because it could have changed her pressure-filled junior year. She remembers how at graduation she thought back to how amazing OHS truly is: "Sitting at table at senior dinner, I broke down.” She knew that OHS would play a large part of her life forever.
Ayla and friends at OHS graduation.
Her tip for OHS students is to remember that everything will work out just fine, stating that "a make it or break moment is never actually is make it or break it.” Ayla considers being kind to people the best advice she can give. She urges everyone to remember that everyone can be dealing with heavy stuff and to consider them. Ayla remembers how one could get swept up in Skype groups and online dialogue, recommending to try to resist the typical high school gossip, often asking herself “Why did we spend so much time on arguments when we are all on the same journey?” She recommends trying not to get too bogged down with work, and instead to do everything early on a rigorous schedule so that you have Friday through Sunday free for having an adventure. She emphasizes the need to recognize what you require to be mentally happy and to leave time to be a normal teenager.
In the future, Ayla looks forward to being either a foreign correspondent in an area like the Middle East, a political journalist in Washington D.C., or escaping to Iceland on a boat to write a series of personal essays on the chaotic experiences of growing up.
Ayla sailing in the Bahamas for the Yale Varsity Sailing Team.