Tenafly — Tenafly High School’s valedictorian, Ronald Serko said the keys to achieving his academic success were luck and natural ability.
"I’m not sure that I necessarily worked that much harder than anyone else," he said.
His schedule for the second half of his senior year might prove otherwise. Serko took four Advanced Placement classes: English literature, calculus BC, chemistry and French language. He also had American mind honors, American foreign policy honors and honors band.
Serko said he was pleasantly surprised to find there wasn’t that much work involved with each class. He said he would finish all of his work in an hour or two and had the remainder of the night to do as he pleased.
Serko is president of the Tutoring Club and Chemistry Club as well as treasurer of Global Care Unlimited and treasurer of the Chamber Music Club. Serko said his involvement with the Tutoring Club has been the most rewarding of his extracurricular activities. He said children from the community, mostly elementary school students come to the club with various levels of ability.
"Some of them need help with basic reading and some of them are English Language Learners," he said. "And then others of them are doing math and writing at several grade levels above their current class so we try and stimulate those who can use the extra stimulation and help bridge the gap with those who are in need of extra assistance."
Serko said he thought he could end up at the top of his class and considers it a very rewarding accomplishment, one that helped him earn a spot in the freshman class at Harvard University.
Serko is very excited to attend Harvard where he will likely major in government or economics.
"Right now, we’re going through the whole signing of the yearbook phase so obviously a lot of memories and emotions are coming out," he said. "But I’m also looking forward to the change of scenery and new opportunities to learn and meet people."
Serko said his favorite quote, "knowledge comes but wisdom lingers" by English poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson didn’t seem to make much sense to him at first because the terms seemed synonymous until he thought about the quote more in-depth.
"I found that there’s certainly a difference between the two," he said. "Wisdom is probably the more valuable of the two…it’s the decision-making as opposed to fact-based storage of information."
Serko said his role models are his parents, who have been a formative influence on the way he has conducted his life thus far.
In his free time, Serko said he enjoys "pretty standard teenage stuff" like listening to music, hanging out with his friends, watching sports and playing Madden and Grand Theft Auto. He also enjoys reading novels by some of his favorite authors such as John Steinbeck and James Joyce.
