Throughout her time at St. Joseph High School, Emily Dickinson, the school’s 2023 salutatorian, has exhibited leadership qualities that has guided her to success.
Emily Dickinson developed those leadership qualities through her organizational skills and an engaged community spirit that will lead her to go to Princeton University in the fall on her path to becoming a lawyer.
“I’m probably not the typical leader,” she said. “I don’t really like stand up and just start talking the loudest in the room. I’m more of that I’m really organized. I have a plan, and I’m able to execute it, so I think that makes a good leader and other people have seemed to recognize that, too.”
That recognition has seen her be captain of the school’s soccer team, a cheerleader, a member of student council, a member of the National Honor Society and helping establish the Mayor’s Youth Council with the city of Victoria.
Dickinson has always had a fascination with government, seeing the contrast of how governments operate from where she grew up in Trinidad and Tobago as the daughter of an American and a Trinidadian and the government here in the U.S., she said.
She plans to study public policy at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs in the fall.
“I’ve always kind of been interested in public policy, like you can see through starting Mayor’s Youth Council and doing student government. That’s always interested me,” Dickinson said.
Throughout her time at the school, the things she enjoyed most were the community service projects — such as with Jeans for Teens, where her project members were able to collect over 300 jeans for Jeans for Teens — and the establishing of the Mayor’s Youth Council last year, she said.
However, it will be her cheerleading that will help provide a support structure as she moves to Princeton for her continued education as she will be part of the Princeton Cheer Team, Dickinson said.
“I don’t know anybody up there. So it’s really nice to go into this big kind of scary school and already have a few friends and be a part of a team,” she said.
Dickinson’s success is hardly surprising for her parents as she had good study habitats from a young age and committed herself to a well-rounded high school experience before going to a big out-of-state school, Dickinson’s mom Kara Dickinson said.
“When you see your kid get their dreams, it is really amazing,” she said. “She’s gonna have some really amazing opportunities and I know she’s going to take advantage of them because she works hard.”
Dickinson said she plans on becoming a corporate lawyer in New York after graduating from Princeton as she like’s the analysis and communication that goes along with the field.
It will be a few year’s before she’s ultimately settled on the field of law, but she is looking forward to her college experience, she said.