2022 Oceanside Val and Sal embrace culture

Heritage and connecting to culture is the unifying theme that tie this year’s Oceanside Valedictorian and Salutatorian, Thomas Eldho and Sara Brobston, together.

Thomas Eldho

Eldho’s family came to America in 2009, emigrating from India when he was four years old. Although he has been in States and the Oceanside school district ever since, he has made it a point to embrace the cultures of other nations through his participation in model U.N. conferences through the world interest club.

“It’s been a really big part of my life and it’s been like a second home for me and really developed me as a person and broke me out of my shell,” Eldho said. “It allowed me to express big ideas a thoughtful manner. I was president of the club this year so I’m really glad that I’m leaving it off on a good note and I think they’re going to do really well next year.”

Other activities he looks back fondly on include his internship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where he researched disseminated breast cancer cell and science Olympiad, where he served as Vice President.

Academically, he undertook 14 AP courses over his four years and says one of his favorites was human geography.

“It wasn’t what I was actually expescting,” Eldho said. “It’s the study of people and how the world was built around us and how there are certain population that are systemically facing harder challenges than others and that was a really eye-opening experience.”

Athletically, he was a member of the varsity tennis team for the past two years, where he won a sportsmanship award from the United States Tennis Association and won a conference championship.

He says that he was inspired from early on in his academic career to become valedictorian and has ever since worked to make it a reality.

“There was a time in seventh or eighth grade where they were they naming that year’s valedictorian and salutatorian and my social studies teacher came up to me and told me ‘I want to hear your name called out one day,’” Eldho said. “So, that was the start where I really diverted all my attention to this and thought I could feasibly do it and really tried hard in my classes to accomplish that goal.”

Next year, Eldho will attend an eight-year medical program at Hofstra University. While he said he can’t pinpoint what area of medicine he would like to pursue at this point, he leaning towards either pediatrics or oncology.

Sara Brobston

Brobston says that her culturally diverse background made her fall in love with learning languages, which she has pursued to the fullest extent at Oceanside.

“My nana immigrated from Italy to here where she met my grandfather who was a Polish immigrant,” Brobston said. “So, when I was here, I took the elementary school Spanish class in grades K through six and then in seventh grade, I was like I want to learn how to communicate with my family so I started taking Italian until 12th grade and last year I took Japanese as well. It’s just an intro class but I really like Japan and I just like to learn about really anything new that I can and it was a cool experience because Italian is closer to me but with Japanese, it was an entirely new structure and language.”

  Academically, she has also been heavily involved with AP courses, taking nine over her four years and this year especially enjoyed her “AP Experience” class.

  “That class allows you to do something you’re normally not able to do and almost pursue a passion project,” Brobston said. “Personally, I’ve never really been able to do a lot of art, which is something that everyone should embrace and explore the creative side of themselves. So, for my AP Experience, I’m choosing sculptures from history and recreating them on a smaller scale and studying how the sculpture is made.”

  Additionally, she is graduating with a 4.0 GPA.

  Outside of the classroom, she played soccer JV soccer ninth and tenth grade and varsity eleventh and twelfth grade, was a member of the cancer awareness club, care club, environmental club, and three honor societies.

  Additionally, she was a volunteer for Horseability and took private piano lessons.

  She says one of her greatest memories was making many new friends during her senior year.

“They were just in a lot of my classes this year and I happened to strike up a lot of conversations with them until it led to a friendship,” Brobston said. “I think being surrounded by people who think like me in terms of drive really allowed me to grow into friendships and they pushed me to do a lot of new things. Like, I did not want to go to prom at all and I ended up being pestered into doing it.”

In the fall, Brobston will be attending Tufts University and while she is going in undecided, wants to place a heavy focus on language.

“Tufts has a pretty rigorous language requirement,” Brobston said. “Some people may be like ‘Ew, I don’t want to do that but I was like ‘wow, I want to do at least one or maybe a few and maybe even minor in it.’ Maybe I’ll continue with Italian or really grow with Japanese; I want to honestly learn every single language, really.”