DACC’s Simons follows her lifelong passion

Vic­to­ria Simons

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

“Tak­ing the unknown and mak­ing it known,” is what Delaware Area Career Cen­ter stu­dent Vic­to­ria Simons hopes to do in her future as she stud­ies life under a microscope.

The senior, whose home school is Wor­thing­ton Kil­bourne High School, is in her sec­ond year at the Career Center’s zoo school with plans to attend col­lege and even­tu­ally obtain a doctorate.

Victoria’s love of the ocean, sci­ence and ani­mals can be traced back to when she was four years old. It was then that dur­ing a behind the scenes tour at Sea World, she saw a marine biol­o­gist and she knew, even then, that this is what she wanted to do.

And so she plans to major in marine biol­ogy and cel­lu­lar biology.

Schools on her short list to attend include MIT or Duke, Har­vard, Rut­gers, Ohio State or Bowl­ing Green State universities.

All the essays and some appli­ca­tions are com­pleted as she is now in the midst of the col­lege appli­ca­tion process.

“I know I want to work in a lab. That’s what inter­ests me the most,” Vic­to­ria said, adding, “I see myself at a microscope.”

She will be look­ing at chem­i­cals, pro­teins and com­pounds, she said, search­ing for cures, dis­eases and new uses “tak­ing the unknown and mak­ing it known.”

Vic­to­ria was 5 years old when she was given her first micro­scope. It was a lit­tle plas­tic green one. “I remem­ber the first time I saw plants cells on a blade of grass,” she said. “I’ve been a biol­ogy lover my entire life.”

Vic­to­ria is also a cer­ti­fied scuba diver, with about six dif­fer­ent certifications.

With her back­ground and love of sci­ence, Vic­to­ria jumped at the chance to enroll in the zoo school where she has taken zool­ogy and statistics.

“Stats is fun,” Vic­to­ria said, not­ing the research involved with the class.

Vic­to­ria spent last year study­ing domes­tic chick­ens. This year she has an intern­ship at the Dis­cov­ery Reef where her tasks teach her how to run an aquar­ium. She is doing many of the same tasks a keeper would do, such as test­ing the water quality.

“The oppor­tu­nity do research while still in high school is an amaz­ing oppor­tu­nity, like a dream,” she said of her expe­ri­ence at zoo school.

Laura Hen­der­son is the Career Center’s project coor­di­na­tor and instruc­tor of the Colum­bus Zoo & Aquar­ium School.

“Vicki Simons, aca­d­e­m­i­cally, has been one of our best stu­dents dur­ing the past two years of Zoo Research School. She has an intrin­sic curios­ity about all liv­ing things. She is also a very kind and gen­tle per­son who is always will­ing to help her teach­ers and her class­mates. While she says she loves to spend time behind a micro­scope, I can also see her fly­ing along in a zodiac ready to scuba dive to study a marine crea­ture,” Hen­der­son said.

Vic­to­ria is busy beyond zoo school as well. While earn­ing numer­ous aca­d­e­mic awards, she also has time to be a stu­dent advi­sory board mem­ber for the Lead­er­ship Wor­thing­ton Pro­gram, do com­mu­nity ser­vice work through her high school club Inter­act, vol­un­teer at the zoo, par­tic­i­pate on the In The Know team and the Sci­ence Olympiad team this year.

Dur­ing the sum­mer months, one might find her scuba div­ing at any of the numer­ous quar­ries in the area. In her spare time, she also enjoys read­ing sci­ence fic­tion and fan­tasy novels.

Orig­i­nally from Scotts­dale, Ariz., Vic­to­ria has lived in the Cen­tral Ohio area since the fifth grade, a day after the fam­ily arrives, there was a “giant bliz­zard. I was con­fused. All I saw was white,” she said.

It was the first time she had ever seen real snow.

But now, in her final year of high school she has both her high school and zoo friends. She does not view it as a prob­lem that she is not see­ing her high school friends as often as she used to.

“I look at it as not as los­ing friends, but gain­ing more friends,” she said.

With prom and grad­u­a­tion to look for­ward to, and hope­fully a sum­mer job to help pay for col­lege, Vic­to­ria thinks what lies ahead will finally sink in the closer she gets to graduation.

With the prospect of leav­ing the area for the unknown, Vic­to­ria said, “The way I learned to think of things is, if all else changes, I am still me — the con­stant. I will have new friends, new expe­ri­ences, but it does not frighten me all that much.”

Vic­to­ria is the daugh­ter of Debra and Tim Simons of Powell.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Oct 22 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.