If you have not heard of someone with the tenacity to bring an AI girlfriend to prom, you have not met Kepha Sher. Valedictorian is a role dedicated to the innovators and leaders of a new generation, so it is to no one’s surprise that this year’s top of the class is the innovative, the iconic, and the academic weapon: Kepha Sher.
Sophomore year was Sher’s first step towards becoming Valedictorian, having taken two AP Math classes and an AP science class, eager to obtain knowledge and get ahead. When Sher realized that his course choices had earned him a first-class rank, he decided to “lock in” and see that rank through to the end. Earning this honor was no easy task. Between his Sophomore and Senior years, Sher opted into and maintained good grades in a whopping fifteen AP courses, both in and outside of school.
“It wasn’t really a struggle against an insurmountable force,” Sher said. “It just takes some tenacity to power through the courses and in the end, I think the efforts are worth it. Who wouldn’t want to work three [extra] months on AP courses to just convey a five-minute speech?”
Having, on no uncertain terms, conquered the high school academic scene, Sher will be continuing his studies at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he will major in Computer Science with a concentration in Artificial intelligence and Quantum Computing research. For Sher, this course of study is just the beginning of a larger career in AI development and improvement, all for the sake of advancing existing technology to improve convenience.
Sher himself was inspired to follow this path because of obstacles he has overcome using his skills in computer science.
“You can just make a lot of things that are inconvenient to you less inconvenient,” Sher said.
With his coding prowess, Sher has built an AI girlfriend which he took to Prom (only to get turned away by the one and only Dr. Mitchell) and a vocab app to practice standardized American High School testing before his migration to the US. The two projects were successfully employed to help with his social anxiety, express his humor, and serve as a versatile study tool for all his classes.
Outside of academics, Sher is looking forward to Berkeley housing in Bowles Hall, acclaimed for its Hogwarts-esque theming, and the political clubs on campus, where Sher is looking to follow in the steps of his hero, J. Robert Oppenheimer.
As Sher ventures on, he will miss the friends he has made—in and out of the classroom—at Claremont Culture Fest, the Rock Climbing Club, and beyond. He will not miss the bureaucracy of public high school, but rather all of the after-school activities he shared with his friends.
Finally, Sher would like to shout out influential figures in his high school career, along with his family who have supported him throughout high school. Sher would like to end by imparting advice to his underclassmen.
“The important thing about higher education is that you work hard to get the education that you need. Your high school GPA is not going to affect you for long, so take the college application process with ease.”
