Upcoming Oakton graduate takes “two for one” to a new level

Everyone likes a good deal, but Serafina Paulino, who will be graduating from Oakton Community College on May 15, takes “two for one” to a whole new level. She attends two colleges, is studying to complete two majors and plays two sports.

She was a two-sport athlete and salutatorian at her home high school, Academy of Our Lady of Guam in Hagatña on the U.S. territory of Guam, a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean where her mother is a senator. When she was wait-listed at her first-choice school, Stanford University (she eventually was accepted), she instead committed to a full-ride scholarship at Loyola University in Chicago--7,364 miles away from home.

While being recruited to play soccer, she met Oakton soccer coach Steve Brody. Once she reached Chicago, she was curious about Oakton and came out to meet the coaches and see the campus.

“I fell in love with Oakton. I didn’t feel like an outsider here because the students are so diverse,” Paulino explains. “People don’t give community colleges enough credit, you really have to experience Oakton for yourself,” Paulino says, explaining what attracted her to Oakton. “Loyola is a wonderful school, but honestly, I find the courses at Oakton every bit as challenging. And, because I had smaller classes and was involved in more Socratic dialogue with professors, I feel like I’ve learned more here.”

Rather than choosing one school over the other, she made the unusual decision to attend both at once. She has her academic goals set on two majors--psychopharmacology and journalism. To accomplish this goal, she took five classes at Oakton and five at Loyola each semester, while also playing two sports, soccer and softball at Oakton. In her second year, she reduced her load to five classes at Oakton and three at Loyola.

“I was named captain of the soccer team, and I wanted to focus on my soccer,” she explains.

Paulino was recently diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease with no cure. This unfortunate news has helped make up her mind to finish her schooling in Texas after graudating from Oakton to be closer to relatives in the Houston area. “When I go home this summer, I plan to work in the lupus wing of the Guam Regional Medical Center for the summer. I want to learn everything I can about this disease,” she says.

Her Human Development professor, Paul Johnson, says that, “Serafina is easy to root for. She loves to learn, is committed to studying, and is one of the top students I have encountered because of her combination of determination and academic ability.”