Karen Zavala
Moving on
by Stanford
Kekauoha
Meet Ana Karen Zavala. An eleventh grader at Horizonte Instruction and Training Center. She is soft spoken
yet smart and confident. Her favorite subjects are Language Arts and Science; Language Arts for the big
words and Science for the egg and vinegar experiments.
Her favorite thing to do is shopping, especially at Forever 21. She eventually wants to be a cop or nurse but
is not quite sure at the moment.
Karen is one of the 1,700 students who attended the 2014 Multicultural Youth Leadership Summit. She says
one message really stood out for her. It was the story of one of the presenters who at the time was a single
dad trying to get through school. Only after h dropped out of school, did he realize he would not be able to
do much in life without his diploma. He decided to go back to school.
“It really helped me open my eyes to see why school is important, even though you face a lot of obstacles
you have to [keep moving] on,” said Karen. “Before the Summit I didn’t really think about my possibilities…
there were some lazy days I was just like, I just want to drop out.” She is now attending classes regularly and
getting good grades.
“It’s a great [Summit], I really liked it. I recommend everyone go to realize what’s really important and how
school will affect your life. It changed my way of seeing things.”
Karen is now aware of her full potential. With the support of her mother she knows that if she works hard and
never loses sight of her goals, she will go on to do great things, even on those lazy days.
MCA.UTAH.GOV | VOICES | 08