Where Are They Now? Nick Ungarino

by Beth Dolinar, Luminari Coordinator, Speak & Tell! Director

Nick Ungarino Photo by Cooper Kusbit

Here at Lumos, we like to check back in with some of our campers, to find out what they’ve been up to—and to get their thoughts on how the Luminari Camp experience has enhanced their lives.

Nicholas Ungarino attended both “I Want to be an Ambassador!” and “Speak & Tell!” camps in summer 2016. He’s now a senior at Northgate High School.

Senior year of high school has the reputation of being rather easy, because students have one foot out the door on the way to college. Are you finding that to be the case with your senior year?

This school year I filled my schedule with some of the more rigorous advanced placement courses including Calculus, Statistics, Physics 2, and English literature including seven college credits. In addition to my classes, I've begun to practice cross-country mountain bike racing. This adds to my already busy schedule of cross-country, track, and work. Any spare time I have left is usually dedicated to learning 3D modeling and animation alongside coding. So when it comes down to it, I have to say that this year is even more difficult than the previous.

What are your college and career plans?

At the moment, I'm not completely sure where I will be going to college. I do know that I will be attending either Pennsylvania State, Ohio State, Purdue, or Georgia Institute of Technology for aerospace engineering. Beyond college, in the best scenario, I will receive a dream job at NASA, Boeing, or SpaceX.

In what way did the Luminari camps change the way you think about yourself—your strengths and your weaknesses?

One of the things Luminari taught me about my weaknesses is, instead of trying to hide them, to use them as an excuse to show that I have the initiative to improve myself. I was also taught to take advantage of my strengths in all aspects of my life to further myself.

You attended the Ambassador Camp last summer. In what way did that experience change the way you look at your high school classmates?

Ambassador camp helped me to view situations from everyone's perspective and backgrounds to understand why each person may react in certain ways. This skill has helped me to guide classmates through their situations and problems.

You're a student athlete. Do you plan to continue with sports in college? if not, what will you miss most about them?

Aside from mountain biking, I do not plan to play any sports competitively. But being an athlete and a lover of many sports, I will most likely be joining the snowboarding, soccer, and hockey clubs.

At the closing program of the Speak and Tell Camp, you told the story of how you ate the world's hottest pepper and lived to tell about it. How's your hot pepper consumption habit been lately? Do you still risk the really hot ones?

Since eating the Carolina reaper pepper, I have stayed far away from extremely hot peppers, though most peppers aren't very hot in comparison. My next challenge will be to complete the Triple Atomic Wing challenge at Quaker Steak & Lube with my friends.

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Are you a former Luminari camper? Are you interested in sharing with our readers how your participation in one of our camps has influenced your life? Would you be interested in updating the Luminari community on recent accomplishments, lessons learned or life goals? Let us know in the comments below.

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