Vegas teen graduates after earning 15 credits in 1 semester
Paola Trejo was not among the five valedictorians who spoke at Saturday’s graduation of Cimarron-Memorial High School’s Class of 2015.
Nor did she wear the white gown of the honor students, clustered near the stage on the floor of the cavernous Orleans Arena off Tropicana Boulevard.
She sat in the second-to-last row of a graduating class of 447, between girls whose last names she did not know but followed on Instagram.
“To be honest, I worked so hard this semester I didn’t have that many friends,” she said.
Nonetheless, her achievement this spring found recognition among the other accolades for star athletes and students. Principal Lori Lawson-Sarabyn alluded to Trejo, while valedictorian Chloe Davis may well have when speaking about fellow students who had “obstacles waiting to block them at every moment along the way.”
That’s because after two semesters of academic work in Mexico failed to transfer to the U.S., the 18-year-old crammed a year-and-a-half of schoolwork into one semester.
Trejo passed 15 credits in the spring semester of her senior year, including maintaining a 3.8 GPA in her eight classes during the third quarter.
To put that in perspective, the Clark County School District requires high school students to pass 22.5 credits to graduate.
“I’m actually surprised I made it, not gonna lie,” said Trejo, a thin, dark-haired young woman who was wearing a scarlet cap and gown. “Even teachers would approach me and ask if I was going to make it.”
Trejo lived in Las Vegas since the age of 2, when her parents immigrated from Mexico.
She attended Northwest Career and Technical Academy from her freshman year through the first semester of her junior year.
Then, in December 2013, a family issue caused them to move back to Mexico, in the state of Chihuahua. Trejo enrolled in school there, a stranger in her birth country.
“It was something brand-new for me,” she said. “I had spoken Spanish with my parents since I was young, but it’s totally different to be surrounded by it.”
A year later, Trejo’s family returned to Las Vegas on U-Visas, and to a serious problem.
Her credits from Mexico did not transfer, leaving just one semester to make up a year and a half of school. Starting in late January, she threw herself into her studies.
The spring was “hectic,” she said, involving a lot of late nights.
So focused on school work during the semester, Trejo is only now getting around to thinking about what is next.
She knows she wants to go to college, perhaps at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, although she must find a way to pay for it through either financial aid or scholarships. She would like to study either medical billing or go into dentistry.
But first she thanked her parents, who paid for her to take the extra credits, and said she was just glad she could celebrate her graduation with them.
“It’s been like one year,” her father, Guadalupe Trejo, said outside after the ceremony. He added, “And she got it in four months.”
Later that evening, they planned to go to church and pray.
Contact reporter Knowles Adkisson at kadkisson@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5529. Follow @knowlesadkisson on Twitter.
