Rameen Fatima

Junior Corbin Lobos standing in front of Metea’s flag gallery.

Between Speech rehearsals, art sketches, and long nights spent on creative projects, junior Corbin Lobos has built a life at Metea Valley defined by curiosity and creativity.

What clubs have you been involved in so far?

I am a member of the Metea Valley Speech Team, which has honestly been one of the most fun activities I’ve ever done in my life. I am in humorous acting with my partner, Ayush Shah. We are currently first string, which is essentially just varsity, and it is so much fun. I was additionally on the cross-country team, but I dropped out of an outside-of-school cycling club. I am in the National Art Honor Society because I am an artist. That’s a lot of fun. And I am also the co-founder, along with three others, of Metea Valley’s aviation aerospace Club, where we do a whole bunch of activities, and you guys should totally join.

How do you keep up with managing so many roles?

It’s really difficult because there’s a lot of things I have to do, but essentially, I don’t use my phone very often because I just don’t have the time to, but most of the time I just, I get back home and my order is I get all of my schoolwork done and then I do my extracurriculars, and then I have free time. And the reason why I don’t overload my free time with more extracurriculars is that it’s super important for my mental health. I always want some sort of break at the end of the day, where I can just kind of reclaim myself and have a mental health break.

What advice would you give to other students who are also juggling many activities simultaneously?

I think one of the things that’s overshadowed in our school, the biggest factor for success, is confidence, I think, and it does tie into stress. I think that if you have the confidence that you can do it, then you can. Confidence is something that will get you through everything in life. If you have the confidence that you can manage all of these things, it’s hard, and it’s supposed to be; that’s the whole point of it being challenging. If you can confidently tell yourself you can do it, then you will be able to do it, and confidence is also super easily faked, and that’s good. It is great to fake confidence, and it’s so easy to do so. I think everybody should either be confident or fake being confident.

How do you manage the workload?

Most of the extracurriculars are like that day, so they are the most imminent in a way. So I get those done first. If there’s a project, I save that later, and then I do my schoolwork.

What areas could teachers provide help in?

One of the things that could benefit students is actually having work time, because we are handed a lot of papers and projects that don’t take much time. In school, we should also have free time. I think teachers can always be a little bit more lenient with things, because they don’t always know what the kids are going through or what the kids have to do. So sometimes, for me and all of my peers, there are a lot of situations where I have a project, and it’s not feasible for me to get it done. I have other more pressing things. A lot of teachers are saying, in a sense, that they want their class prioritized, but for some kids, other classes are higher priorities. So I think teachers should really be more lenient with the grading, and they should also be more lenient with the due dates for assignments.

What are your plans for next year?

I’m actually gonna try and overload myself with more clubs. I’m basically testing the waters as a junior. But essentially, I’ll just be adding more leadership positions, just because I’m very interested in leadership positions in the clubs I am in.

What do you do in your free time?

I go out and hang out with my friends, I drive a lot, and I am also somewhat of an automotive repairman. I work on cars pretty often. I’m also an artist, so I draw on the side.