In high school, we often find ourselves struggling to keep academics and sports balanced. Especially as seniors, the process becomes a lot more difficult because of college applications and deciding what we want to do later in life. However, Craig Valdez has worked hard all of his four years and will be going to college specifically for academics.

Valdez is a senior at Ripon High, and this year, he applied to one California State University, as well as three Universities of California. Valdez will be attending University of California, Santa Barbara, this fall. In his time at Ripon High, he has maintained an average GPA of 4.3 throughout all four years. At the same time, he has managed to stay involved in clubs and sports.

“If I need to take a day off of sports because of school work I will. My schoolwork will always shine greater than sports, so if I had to give up one I’d give up sports,” Valdez said, “I always try to make sure my academics aren’t lagging so I can focus on school. Mrs. Burton has always encouraged me to do well in my sports as well, which also helps.”

Valdez will be majoring in biochemistry because he thinks that the world needs more biochemists. He also strongly believes that the world needs science. Valdez would like to do a lot of research for science in general.

Although balancing sports and grades can be a challenge by itself, college applications are also very stressful to some students. To Valdez, however, they weren’t too stressful.

“Throughout the application process I wrote a total of four essays which actually wasn’t to stressful for me. The earlier you start thinking about it, the less stressful the situation is. When you take things in chunks, it makes everything a lot easier,” Valdez exclaimed.

Procrastination is also a problem in high school, but when you are about to enter a completely new college atmosphere, it becomes a different story. One of the main pieces of advice Valdez wants to give to other high school students has to do with procrastination.