• Finding her vision

Hillsboro High School senior Addison Jost remembers exactly when she understood  a class was not just a class, but her future taking shape.

“My ‘ah-ha’ moment was when I joined our AV class my sophomore year, and I got to actually see what the class looks like as a career, and I was like, ‘Wait, I love this.  This is what I want to do.’ ”

She hadn’t known that video editing and social media management weren’t just things you did with your iPhone and Instagram accounts but actual career paths. She’s now heading to Tabor College, next door to the high school, to major in communications and sports information.

“My dream job would be working for a sports team, like at a Div. I university,  getting to create videos for their teams and game day graphics for social media,” she said.

A Governor’s Scholar, she will graduate May 16 as one of six valedictorians in her class of 33.

Asked to talk about challenges she’s faced in high school, all Addison would say was how fortunate she was not to have had major hurdles.

She lauded her AV teacher, Bailey Kaufman, for keeping creative channels open for students – encouraging them to try everything they could come up with in the studio. 

“Without her, the class wouldn’t have existed,” Addison said.  

Aside from serious academic work, choir and athletics frame what she considers some of her favorite accomplishments in high school.

A “really crazy accomplishment,” she said, was getting perfect scores in all three choir programs she sang in at state competition. “That is really hard to do.”

She got the thrill of placing in state volleyball competition twice — on the championship team in her sophomore year, and this year in third place. 

At 5 foot 10, she was valuable on the basketball team, too, “on the outside, shooting the threes,” she said, because there were even taller teammates at center.

 At Tabor she’ll sing in choir, compete in track, and build on that “ah-ha” career discovery.