Yuriyel and the Latin That Comes Alive

Every moment in Yuriyel's Latin class carries a small charge for her: hearing the language spoken aloud, she says, makes it feel magical, alive in a way the page alone does not capture. It is a fitting reaction from a student who also says that Latin is full of rules amid a great number of exceptions, and that learning patience with those exceptions taught her something she now applies well past the language: a problem that doesn't fit the expected mold is no reason for frustration. There is always an answer.

Three years since arriving with no prior acquaintance with Latin, she holds Maxima Cum Laude on the National Latin Exam, a Gold Medal on the National Latin Vocabulary Exam, and a Silver Medal in SCRIBO. She was inducted, this year as well, into the National Latin Honor Society.

Her range beyond Latin runs toward engineering. A Silver Medal in the International Research Paper of STEM Contest and a Gold Medal at UKMT sit alongside admission to AwesomeMath, the Johns Hopkins Engineering Innovation Camp, and the International Math and Physics Summer Camp. At her school, St. Johnsbury on Jeju, she founded the Fencing Club, presides over the European Language Club, chairs the Jeju Youth Committee, and founded and presides over the GoodWill Project Club, through which she arranges volunteer activities for her classmates. She also reports for the school newspaper, writing on science and school events, and hopes, eventually, to contribute to search-and-rescue technology through engineering.

Outside of all this, she cooks from her late grandmother's recipes and plays violin in her school orchestra. Latin, in her own one-word definition, is simply a key.