Past & Present: Back in the Bay ('10)

As a part of our alumni series we interviewed this class of 2010 alum who now works in the Bay. Read this extended version of his interview below.

Q: Looking back, what do you think of your time at MV?

A: I had a great time at Monta Vista. I enjoyed the environment, I thought it was great when I was there. I made a lot of friends in college, but a lot of the friends I still talk to today are the ones I made at Monta Vista, specifically FBLA. Pretty much the officer team I was with, we still communicate. We’ve been having fun happy hour stuff together on the weekends. My experience was great and I graduated class of 2010. I felt like the classes I took at MV really prepared me for college and that translate to my working experience. I know it can be pretty stressful at times and I’m sure every year it gets more and more stressful cause more expectations these days for high school students than when I was there.

Q: Aside from FBLA what else were you involved with?

A: I was in leadership, I was class president my sophomore year then in club commission junior year, and I was student board rep my senior year. I did mock trial for a couple years, I did sports, played football, wrestled, and did track and field. And I joined Octagon as a freshmen, like everyone else.

Q: What’s your favorite MV memory?

A: It was probably participating in FBLA. It was a huge part of my experience and a lot of my closest friends that I still talk to weekly were in it. It also helped me figure out I wanted to study business in college.

Q: What your advice would you give to yourself when at MV?

A: I was really concerned with getting into college and what I was going to do after that. I felt like I didn’t have enough time and I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do so I could figure out what I needed to do to get on that path. I’d probably tell myself that it’s okay to chill for a little bit and spend a little more time figuring out what I wanted to do. Looking back, you realize how young I was in high school and how much time I had to figure stuff out. I kind of gave a vague answer for my next steps for my career cause I’m still trying to figure stuff out now and that’s okay. [...] Enjoy the things you want to do in high schooler and take a breather.

Q: What advice would you give to current MV students?

A: You know if you weren’t taking tons of AP classes or if you took Chem instead of Chem Honors. I don’t know if that’s still a thing. [...] If you weren’t taking certain classes, you wouldn’t be as successful. That was how it felt. I have friends who took the whole gamut, people who took 9 APs or took them on their own, some who never took any, both seem just as happy and just as successful today. I think a lot of the academic stress people put on themselves is because they’re worried their actions in high school may have an effect on how the rest of your life is like. I don’t think there’s a huge correlation there. You don’t have to kill yourself doing everything.

Q: Any MV traditions you remember?

A: I don’t mean to get all old and say back in my day. But back in my day, so after I graduated they started doing quad decs. Before that, we used to do floats. They would create a diorama on a flatbed truck and they would drive them around the track and field. We also used to have dirt tracks. The reason they got rid of the floats apparently was because of the tracks, I think in my junior or senior year, when they voted to put in the rubber tracks and lights, we used to have to go to Cupertino High School for home games cause we didn’t have lights and we couldn’t play in the dark. We used to have homecoming at Cupertino which was kind of weird.

Q: Music to describe your time at MV?

A: My freshmen year, there was this song by One Republic that came out called “Apologize” and it was pretty big. I listened to a ton of that, I was a little emo when I was younger, had a lot of emotions that I needed to get out. Maybe that one, but I don’t think it fit my experience all that much, I think I’d want something a little more upbeat like “Boom Boom Pow” by the Black Eyed Peas.

Q: What are you up to now?

A: I’m working at a tech company in the Bay Area. It’s called Applied Materials and they do semiconductor manufacturing so make a lot of the chips and stuff that go inside your phones, laptops, pretty much any electronics. I do marketing for them, specifically, I do a lot of work in competitive intelligence and pricing. That’s what I’ve been up to pretty much since I graduated college.

Q: Where are you now?

A: I’m still in the Bay Area. I live in an apartment with a couple of roommates and it’s probably a five to ten-minute drive from Monta Vista. [...] I wanted to work in tech after I graduated and a lot of the tech jobs are in this area, especially down in the South Bay. If you’re gonna work in tech it’s either somewhere in SF along the Peninsula or down in the South Bay. So that’s how it ended up working out.

Q: What do you want your future/career to look like?

A: At the moment, besides just growing my current career and getting more responsibilities I definitely need to go back at one point and get my MBA. I think it’s necessary to get it to continue moving along with my career progression. I want to stay in tech so I’ll probably be in the Bay Area for the foreseeable future. I’ve been with my current company for 5 years now so it’s been a little while.

Q: Do you think MV has helped prepare you for the real world?

A: I definitely think so. I think one of the things that was really great at MV was a lot of the people wanted to do well and had high expectations of themselves and you don’t always see that in university and in the workplace. I felt that being surrounded by people who wanted to achieve and do great things really puts you in that mindset for the rest of your life. It formed how you should approach life a little bit, like I want to do exciting things, fun things and work hard to achieve that.

Q: What do you think MV taught you?

A: For me, MV taught me how to function under pressure. Really being able to study effectively, manage my time effectively. It instilled maybe a specific work ethic and I guess expectations for myself of being proud like working hard to accomplish what I wanted to do and achieve. MV was really geared for that, very much like if you work hard and put in the time and effort, you can succeed at whatever you’re doing.