12th Grade, a graduating Senior.
This interview with Gabriel Weiner was conducted in the Fall of his HSCA graduation year. Gabriel continues his higher education at Indiana University.

Q: What is the most interesting thing you have learned from a school subject?
A: Asking this question is like asking which link is the most important in a chain. All knowledge is connected. When a student learns something in one class they are not progressing in that subject alone. As I have experienced in my senior year of high school, everything is connected, everything from rates of change in physics and math to aspects of the soul in literature and theology. All of our information leads to what? Getting a good grade on our tests? Getting a good job? All efforts must be for something, and those efforts depend on the person. But as for myself, I can see that all the knowledge I’ve gained must be towards becoming a godly man.

Q: What is your favorite thing to do?
A: I am a dancer and I love to dance. I also enjoy eating food and sleeping (Gabriel chuckles). Asking “what is your favorite thing to do,” is not different from asking what someone likes to do, and that can be a dangerous thing. To the lamenting Jeremiah, the Lord commanded destroy and rebuild and plant (Jer. 1:10). We as humans are broken and our wills, therefore, are broken also. To be healed from our fallenness and our sin we must let go of our earthly pride. We must change, and in doing so part of our wills must be changed as well (the part of the human spirit which compels us not only to sleep in and eat junk food but to sin as a whole). Therefore the will and the wants of a human, though they may be pure, can also be temptations to fall into complacency and sloth of spirit. What my favorite thing to do is most definitely sleeping, but, much more importantly, what I wish for myself is to grow in the Grace of God.

Q: What is your favorite subject in school?
A: My favorite subject in school is theology. Even though other subjects may seem more important to school boards or the average secular mind, to me theology is the only subject you are guaranteed to use and put to use in your life. Theology is nothing more than the perfect form of philosophy. If I become a professional artist I will most likely never use calculus in my career and conversely if I were an accountant I most likely would never get to put my skills in art to use. But everyone is alive, and everyone has a soul. Conducting one’s own life and soul is the complete focus of philosophy and, therefore, theology. No one can escape their own souls. What is the meaning of life other than to be the best person one can be? Theology is the only subject in school to allow one to study this goal of life.