Mt. St. Dominic's Valedictorian is an S.O. Resident

Pete Carroll always encouraged his daughter to be more outgoing, right up until the day he died in 2003.

Colleen Carroll will thank her father this Sunday morning when she dons her white graduation gown, stands in front of all her classmates and their families, and gives a speech as this year's Mount St. Dominic valedictorian. 

"I think he would've been really proud of me," she said. "He was always really proud of me, no matter what I did."

Pride would come easy to anyone related to a 17-year-old like Carroll. In addition to earning the best academic record in her class, she is a volleyball player, the yearbook editor and leader of her school's social justice committee. Next fall, she will be a Princeton undergrad.

Looking back, she said her toughest challenge in high school was making it through her freshman year. She had trouble adjusting to her new school in Caldwell, about 25 minutes away from her home in South Orange (she carpooled daily with friends). Overcoming a natural shyness was even more difficult.

Yet by her senior year, she had blossomed. Her favorite memory from high school is sitting in her prom dress and high heels at the Pilgrim Diner in Cedar Grove, surrounded by a group of her best friends.

The dance was over and the girls wanted sugar. They ordered French toast with chocolate chips, ice cream and powdered sugar. The baffled waitress brought out all the toppings in separate dishes. The girls laughed about it until they fell asleep in the wee hours at a slumber party.

"I met a lot of really great people, and I think I'm going to be friends with those people for a very long time," Carroll said.

Her contributions to the school will last a very long time, too. This year Carroll led an ambitious effort to teach her peers about poverty in New Jersey and Appalachia as well as women's health issues, sweatshops and child soldiers.

On April 15, she organized a series of workshops for Social Justice Day at Mount St. Dominic. In addition to the workshops, which were all taught by students, two students gave firsthand accounts of helping to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and giving aid to earthquake victims in Haiti.

In addition, Carroll assisted with the school's production of "Anything Goes" this year as the on-stage lighting expert.

"My most favorite activity was the social justice committee," Carroll said.

She called the activities she did, including editing the yearbook and playing volleyball all four years her "downtime."

"It was busy," she said. "But I really like doing those things."

While also volunteering regularly at a local senior home with Alzheimer's patients, Carroll has maintained a 4.0 grade-point average throughout her high school career, scored in the top two percentile on the SAT and AP exams, is a member of the National Honor Society, a commended student in the National Merit competition and an Edward J. Bloustein Distinguished Scholar.

When asked the secret of her overachieving, she said it was a combination of talent, hard work and time management.

"Of the three, time management is the hardest," she said, admitting that she would start on her homework at school in between classes.  She said she also recognized that math and science came easier to her than history and English did, so she divvied up her homework time accordingly.

Carroll has a younger brother, Patrick, 15, who goes to St. Francis Xavier School in Newark, while mother, Patricia, works as a nurse.

Her father, who had diabetes, died when his blood-sugar level became too low, causing him to faint and hit his head.

Carroll said she plans to study engineering or physics at Princeton. She hasn't made up her mind what exactly she'll do when she graduates, but she has already decided that she would like to work in a field where she can continue learning. Research perhaps. Or engineering, because that would mean having to know all the latest technology.

Though the jobs she'll do this summer, babysitting and tutoring at the Math Clinic of South Orange, might have an influence on her future career choice.

"I'm starting to like teaching," she said. "So that may be a possibility."

But first, her speech on Sunday. She said she wants to be honest and impart something she learned outside her textbooks, a lesson her father tried to teach her that she ended up learning on her own.

"Introductions are really hard, but that shouldn't make you afraid to try anything," she said. "My freshman year I was really timid and not outgoing, but I really liked it, and it all turned out to be OK."