Sophia Mun is the kind of person who is driven to excel, but improves herself by doing better for others.
In fact, if you ask the Hillcrest High senior to reflect on her goals and accomplishments, she’ll start by mentioning the $22,000 she and her fellow Student Body Officers raised for the Husky’s food pantry or the $1,500 Soap, Slips, and Smiles fundraiser she led to support refugee families.
Only by pressing her for more will you learn she is graduating with an International Baccalaureate diploma. Or that she was a Sterling Scholar finalist, a member of the National Honor Society, and the senior representative for Hillcrest’s Key Club. Or that she was named Distinguished Young Woman of the Year, a prize that came with a large college scholarship. Or that she has been accepted to Brown University where she plans to enroll in pre-med courses with the goal of, one day, becoming a dermatologist.
“Canyons [School District] has really pushed me into becoming a better student,” Mun told the Canyons Board of Education on April 9, “and becoming someone who really wants to do better for themselves and do better for others.”
Mun, Hillcrest’s Student Body President, was invited to address the Board in her role as a member of the Board’s Student Advisory Council, which exists to help the Board understand how their decisions impact students. Participating in leadership roles has helped her gain the confidence to speak up on issues of importance, knowing it can make a difference, she says.
In between organizing school events and fundraisers, Mun has dedicated the past six years of her life to learning the violin. She is a great admirer of Jascha Heifetz whom she says is the greatest violinist of all time. From Heifetz she says she has learned, “there is no such thing as perfection. You establish a standard and then you find out it is never good enough. When I play a piece well, I always hope that I’ll play it better tomorrow.”
If she hasn’t reached perfection, she has come pretty close. For four years, she served as concertmaster for the Utah Youth Orchestras and Ensembles. She was also concertmaster for the Artists Orchestra, and if that wasn’t enough, she’s Hillcrest’s Orchestra President and concertmaster for the school’s Chamber Orchestra.
While Mun grew up loving sports and continued to play soccer into high school, she picked up a violin in seventh grade after hearing her brother play the cello. “I fell in love with the sound,” she says, “I really love the soloistic aspects of the violin and what it can have produce. I really enjoy orchestras, being around everyone who has the same passion as who, who enjoys the music as much as you do.”
Time management is definitely something she’s learned in juggling such a busy schedule. Her advice to the next batch of graduates is to do the same and prioritize. “I think that’s the number one piece of success advice I can give,” she says, “because there is so much going on. Know what you really want to do, start getting passionate and make sure you aren’t stressing yourself a lot.”
She is grateful for her musical advisors, Barbara Scowcroft and Rolf Mattson and for Hillcrest’s language arts teacher Lyndee McKay who was her IB English teacher and student government advisor. “She was always very positive,” Mun says “For student government it was really hard, especially when things aren’t going your way and I would definitely say she was able to keep us positive. I really looked up to her.”
Mun is excited for her next adventure, saying her high school education will help propel her into her next chapter in life.
“I’m very grateful for all the people who have been supporting me,” Mun says, “those who did stay by my side and those who did want to make me a better person. I would just say thank you to everyone who stood by me.”
