“At the end of the summer my friends and I drove around to all of the places we liked in Lake Zurich,” MacKenzie Weider, 2017 graduate, said. “We went to the place we went to after graduation and reflected on our high school experiences. We went to My Flavor It! Place and Paulus Park and relived everything and we did these past four years before we went to college to kind of wrap up all of those memories.”

Many students grew up in the LZ community. The place they call home has provided them with nearly everything a community needs: parks, safe neighborhoods, dance companies, sports teams, a variety of cultured restaurants, and other impactful people to make memories. The unique places spread across LZ allow teens to create lasting memories.

“It is cool to have places like My Flavor It Place that are unique to this town as somewhere we can go after school or with friends,” Tristin Sorrells, senior, said. “Places like that definitely shape this community to be what is has become and give us unique memories to look back on in the future.”

The town also provides an environment that makes growing up easier, Sorrells said.

“I feel very grateful for being able to grow up in the LZ community,” Sorrells said. “I absolutely love and adore this town and I really feel like we have amazing teachers and supporters [who] are always rooting for us. I think being around the great people here helps me become a better person.”

The experiences the LZ community provides are important for young children to begin participating in activities that they love and might carry with them to high school. With unique opportunities, like job shadowing, students are given the resources to make educated decisions that will impact what they decide to do later in life. Sorrells was given the chance to partake in job shadowing for Physical Therapy.

“[Job shadowing] provides people with the chance to see a job really up close and personal to see if it really is a good fit for them and see if it is something that they want to pursue one day,” Sorrells said. “It was nice to see the job I hope to have one day in action. I was with Doctor Colosi and I followed him and observed how he handled his patients and the skills he required to do so effectively. ”

Extracurricular activities creates the confidence for students to be leaders and help them speak in front of a crowd while demanding respect. LZ provides many opportunities for students to get involved in the school with the wide variety of clubs and sports offered.

“Learning leadership skills has most definitely helped to boost my confidence a lot,” Sorrells said. “It feels good to know that you’re able to lead a group of people and can use that in the future. When you’re confident in your leadership, people respect and listen to you more and it makes being productive as a team easier and potentially more fun in the long run.”

Being a part of extracuricular activities outside of school, as a leader or a participant, allows students to create a variety of friend groups that may be entirely different from each other giving different perspectives, values, and ideals that these friends possess as well.

LZ’s wide variety of classes and extracurricular activities also helps to give students the opportunity to figure out what careers they want to pursue. Almost every single core class has an advanced placement (AP) class option for the students who feel they can handle an intense and rigorous environment that allows them to experience what a college course may be. These help courses make their future transition smoother and more manageable, Weider said.

High school can be a difficult time for teenagers with the homework and balance of outside activities while also trying to maintain a social life. Obtaining this balance along with the skills students learned at LZ molds them into the well-rounded and successful people many of become later in life. The opportunities in high school make students better and stronger people as they grow up in the LZ communities.