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Wednesday,June9,2021
Columbia Gorge News
www.columbiagorgenews.com
TDHS student heading to U of Chicago
Neita Cecil
■ By Columbia
Gorge News
E
LIJAH PERKINS ISN’T
put off that the
University of Chicago’s
best known catch phrase is
“where fun goes to die.”
“They’re known for being
really rigorous and maybe
it’s too much, but I’ll find
out,” said Perkins, a senior at
The Dalles High School who
moved here two years ago
from Portland.
“I don’t think anyone at the
school thinks it’s true, but it’s
pretty funny.”
Perkins was one of just 6.2
percent of applicants accept-
ed to the top-10 university.
His mom went there, and
his dad worked there, but he
emphasizes that’s not why
he’s going. In fact, he had
to convince his parents that
wasn’t the case.
Rather, on a site visit junior
year he fell in love with the
campus itself — with it’s old,
ivy-covered Gothic architec-
ture — and then, last fall, he
was intrigued by the essay
topics in the application.
There were seven options
for essay questions.
The one he chose to
answer reads as follows:
“Subway maps, evolutionary
trees, Lewis diagrams, each
of these schematics tells the
relationships and stories
of their component parts.
Reimagine a map diagram or
chart. If your work is largely
or exclusively visual, please
include a cartographer’s key
of at least 300 words to help
us best understand your
creation.”
So Perkins wrote about one
of his origami creations, a
beetle, and in an accompany-
ing 700-word essay described
why he likes origami, and the
goal of it, which “is to create,
but also teach.”
Origami is making cre-
ations out of a single sheet
of paper with only folds, and
no cuts.
Perkins started doing
origami as a kid, starting with
the classic origami crane.
In about eighth or ninth
Elijah Perkins spent about eight hours making this origami beetle. He wrote about the beetle for his
application essay to the University of Chicago, where he was accepted.
Contributed photo
Elijah Perkins, who graduates from The Dalles High School this
year, is attending the University of Chicago, a top-10 school nation-
ally, in the fall.
Contributed photo
grade, he started seeing cool
YouTube videos of modular
origami, which uses multiple
sheets of paper connected
together. He belonged to
the Portland Oregon Paper
Shapers, an origami group.
He went often and would
spend three to four 4 hours
folding.
He does use glue to hold
his modular creations
together. “I don’t want kids
ripping them apart, it’d be a
nightmare.”
He can look back at his
work from two or three years
ago “and how much it’s
changed in terms of style,
precision and complexity. It’s
all about practice.”
And he thinks practice is a
key aspect of being smart.
He considers himself
smart, but also thinks the rea-
son he’s smart is “it just takes
practice. That’s now most
things are. No one becomes
smart overnight.”
For example, he likes
history and English and his
favorite aspect of it is the
writing. “I’m good at it. I
enjoy it. I feel like I can make
good observations.”
But writing has been a
hard-won skill. “It took a lot
of practice for me,” he said.
“I looked at my friends’
writing and I said, ‘I want to
write like that,’ and it changed
and it got better.”
He is both a procrastinator
and a hard worker. He may
pick up the task at the last
minute, “But it’s not like I do
a bad job on what I do.”
In fact, he spent 50 hours
polishing both his Chicago
application and the common
application, which is an ap-
plication and essay that can
be sent to multiple colleges.
He feels many students
don’t put the necessary effort
into their essays. “The secret
to getting into the university
that I applied to is I put in a
lot of time into it and I edited
my essays a lot.”
He feels his essay helped
him get accepted. He doesn’t
think it was his grades —
although he has a 3.94 — but
he does have a lot of extracur-
ricular activities, including
band, theater and origami.
Perkins joined theater
when his AP teacher, Mary Jo
Commerford, took him down
the hall to see theater teacher
Lowry Browning, and con-
vinced him to get involved.
He does backstage crew.
“The main appeal for me is
my friends, if I’m going to be
honest,” he said.
“I think your high school
experience is just what you
make of it. I could’ve squan-
dered it and not reached out
and do anything, and I think
a lot of kids do that,” he said.
But he got out of his shell,
“and it was hard for me.” And
he’s glad he did.
Like most students,
Perkins has his favorite and
not-so-favorite subjects.
Science he can do without.
“It’s not complicated, you just
need to study things, and I
don’t study the things. Also
it’s boring. I don’t find much
interest in it at all, like memo-
rizing the periodic table is not
for me.” He does add that he
enjoys any class as long as it’s
engaging and taught well.
As for his college plans, he
said, “I don’t have a major
that I want to do because I
don’t have a job that I want
to do. And I’m not worried
about it either. At 17 I don’t
think you should know what
you want to do for the rest of
your life. It’s a bit unhealthy
I think. Maybe, if you’re that
settled. But there’s still a lot to
learn, I guess.”
His mother, Dr. Serene
Perkins, is a physician and
chief medical officer at Mid-
Columbia Medical Center,
and his father, Dr. C. Ryan
Perkins, is in academia.
He wasn’t pressured to go
into either field, but he was
expected to do well in his
homework.
His dad is the South Asian
Studies and Islamic Studies
librarian at Stanford. Perkins
didn’t want to go to Stanford
though. It’s too hot down
there, and it seemed like
everyone was either a “super
smart tech kid or a jock,” and
he’s neither.
At the University of
Chicago, students are more
literary and academic, he
said. And the cold weath-
er is a big appeal for him.
“Everyone’s wearing like big
trench coats. I gotta get one
of those.”