Olentangy’s Kosmyna is going places

Marta Kos­myna

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Olen­tangy High School senior Marta Kos­myna is con­sid­er­ing the for­eign ser­vice for a career.

“I’m hop­ing to be a for­eign ser­vice offi­cer, maybe some­day a diplo­mat,” Marta said, adding it does not mat­ter which coun­try. Com­ing to the United States when she was 6, Marta speaks both Eng­lish and Ukrain­ian flu­ently. She has also had five years of French and can both speak and read Russ­ian. “Lan­guages come pretty easily.”

Erin Gavula is Marta’s French teacher.

“Since the first day she has always been enthu­si­as­tic about learn­ing the French lan­guage but also the vari­ety of cul­tures that go with it,” said Gavula. “She has a great curios­ity about other cul­tures and is always sug­gest­ing ideas for the class to learn about. I hope that she con­tin­ues her lan­guage stud­ies in col­lege and is able to travel abroad in the future.”

Marta is apply­ing to six col­leges — George­town Uni­ver­sity, Tuft Uni­ver­sity, Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, NYU, Barnard Col­lege and Ohio State Uni­ver­sity — where she plans to major in inter­na­tional for­eign stud­ies and politics.

All the schools are in urban areas, and all have strong inter­na­tional rela­tions programs.

“Being away at school is not a prob­lem. I’m pretty inde­pen­dent; I think my par­ents would agree,” Marta said. She orig­i­nally con­sid­ered jour­nal­ism as a major, “but it’s a hec­tic lifestyle.”

With senior year going well, Marta is look­ing for­ward to graduation.

“Classes are pretty chal­leng­ing this year,” she said. Yet she is enjoy­ing all the senior perks, such as get­ting out early. “It makes up for school being so bad.”

When Marta and her mother moved to the U.S., she began with ESOL classes in West­er­ville and then trans­ferred to the Olen­tangy dis­trict when she was in the fifth grade.

“This dras­tic change in my life made me real­ize the impor­tance of seiz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and rec­og­niz­ing every­thing I’ve been blessed with. I take immense pride in my roots and I never for­get the fam­ily and friends I left behind,” she wrote for her Gazette essay.

Marta is very involved with the Ukrain­ian Cul­tural Asso­ci­a­tion of Ohio which is cen­tered on the Ukrain­ian community.

“There are lots of Ukraini­ans, a lot of Rus­sians as well, here,” Marta said. 

Each year, she dresses in Ukrain­ian regalia to par­tic­i­pate in the U. N. Fes­ti­val in Colum­bus. She also returns to visit the Ukraine dur­ing the sum­mer months, and has trav­eled there on her own the past three summers.

“The first time I was 14 and I took three planes. I’m a pretty adven­tur­ous per­son; I’ve been to seven dif­fer­ent coun­tries,” said Marta, who enjoys expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fer­ent cultures.

Marta has worked her way up in the jour­nal­ism pro­gram at the high school where she is now man­ag­ing edi­tor of The Bea­con. Jes­sica Roads is Marta’s jour­nal­ism teacher.

“She goes above and beyond in this lead­er­ship role,” Roads said of Marta. We actu­ally cre­ated this posi­tion for her this year because she is such a strong mem­ber of the jour­nal­ism pro­gram. She edits copy out­side of school, writes copy and designs pages for us. She is an excep­tional journalist.”

Marta has also com­pleted course­work in mar­ket­ing with the DECA pro­gram. She took sec­ond in state com­pe­ti­tion and third in the dis­trict for her apparel and acces­sories project con­tin­u­ing on to attend the national DECA competition.

She also plays vol­ley­ball for the school where she is a scholar ath­lete and has received OCC hon­or­able men­tion as well.

“Senior night was def­i­nitely emo­tional. I finally real­ized I was wear­ing the jer­sey for the last time ever,” she said, not­ing senior play­ers are “pass­ing the torch down.”

“Marta is a ded­i­cated student-athlete who has set very high goals for her­self through­out high school in both aca­d­e­mics and extracur­ric­u­lars — includ­ing vol­ley­ball,” said Michelle Mimna, Marta’s vol­ley­ball coach. Mimna has known Marta for four years.

“Marta was def­i­nitely one of our senior lead­ers this year, help­ing her team to a 15–9 record and a very com­pet­i­tive sea­son,” said Mimna. “She always had pro­found words of wis­dom for her team­mates to help them stay focused on being a team and over­com­ing obstacles.”

Mimna added Marta is also known as the team princess for her habit of “decorating.”

“We called it ‘bejew­el­ing’ or ‘bedaz­zling’ all of her prac­tice gear,” said Mimna. “She kept us laugh­ing all sea­son and was a key rea­son we had so much fun this year. Marta missed the first six matches of the sea­son due to ill­ness, and was so excited to come back — she played with great pas­sion and com­mit­ment the remain­der of the sea­son. She also took a young sopho­more on var­sity under her wing to help her get bet­ter and bet­ter under­stand the var­sity game. She will be missed by all of us here at OHS next year.”

Mimna said that Marta led the team in blocks this sea­son and has been a starter at the Mid­dle Hitter/Blocker posi­tion for two years.

Other activ­i­ties that keep Marta busy include French Club, National Honor Soci­ety and Ser­vice Club. She also has taken pri­vate piano lessons for 10 years and now teaches piano to begin­ner students.

“I had a good teacher, which luck­ily inspired my pas­sion for music. It’s a good thing to do to express your emo­tions after a hard day. I wanted to spread the love,” she said of her teach­ing piano. “It’s nice to see them do well.”

As if Marta was not doing enough, she was also accepted into The John Glenn School of Pub­lic Affairs High School Intern­ship Pro­gram where she will intern at the Ohio House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives through the Repub­li­can orga­ni­za­tional com­mit­tee. At the same time, she will take a pub­lic rela­tions course at Ohio State University.

“It will be an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence,” Marta said, adding it will be good for net­work­ing. Laugh­ing, she said, “So, I’ve been doing my busi­ness clothes shopping.”

As the year pro­gresses, Marta said it will be hard to say good-bye to her classmates.

“It will be an emo­tional jour­ney at grad­u­a­tion. This year, I’m focus­ing on the time we have now.”

She offers the fol­low­ing advice to those in the lower grades.

“I think high school is high school and you shouldn’t take it too seri­ously. It is time to exper­i­ment, don’t be afraid to take a class, make new friends. Some may turn out to be your best friends,” she said.

Marta is the daugh­ter of Angela Ata­mas and Ronald Bergeron.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Jan 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.