Staples High School valedictorian, Emily Schussheim ’17, is one to carry passion towards her interests as a student, cellist, and creative writer and looks to continue the next chapter of her life at Yale University.
“Emily is the kind of person who is passionate about everything she does. Whether it be in physics or even in her literature class, she truly cares about the material she learns and has a fun time doing so,” Julie Kaplan, a close friend of Schussheim’s said.
With a 4.64 grade point average, a rigorous schedule of 12 AP’s and 10 Honors classes in her four years at Staples High School, Schussheim still finds time to actively pursue her passions.
She is the principal cellist of the Staples symphonic and chamber orchestra, the co president of the Tri-M music honors society and an attendee of summer writing programs such as the Iowa Young Writer’s Studio and the Kenyon Review Young Writer’s Workshop.
When discussing her rigorous schedule, Schussheim notes that, “I’ve never taken a class just because I wanted it to be an AP and make my GPA higher. I genuinely wanted to take these classes.”
However Schussheim admits that it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.“There were definitely periods where I felt like I was doing too much of one thing while making a sacrifice over another and I wasn’t happy about it,” Schussheim said.
She added that it was difficult for her to learn how to balance all of her activities. “I think what a part of high school was for me was learning what I wanted and what I wanted to value and balance,” Schussheim said. “It’s been a learning experience for me wanting to do so much and having to deal with it because it’s taught me what I value and what I need to be a happy human while also letting me have all these opportunities.”
A key factor for Schussheim’s success is her exceptional passion and intellectual curiosity.
According to Robert Papp, Emily’s pre calculus honors and multivariable calculus teacher, Emily was “always a very strong student […] and a leader within her group. She was always punishing the thinking within the group forward and looking to solve things in new interesting ways.” Papp said. “She was always very interactive in class and had a lot to contribute, especially on non math related topics. She brought a lot of interesting perspective from other topics to our math class.”
Additionally Nicole Kiker ’17, a friend of Schussheim’s, said, “Emily will find a thing and just get so into it. Most people will have maybe one thing but Emily will have like six.”
Some of these interests include: humanities, physics, English, urban education reform, and illegal advocacy. Schussheim plans on continuing cello and pursuing humanities, physics, and an education studies program during her time at Yale, yet she is going into her Freshman year undecided. In the far future, post-graduation, Schussheim can see herself doing illegal or frontline advocacy.

Izzy Blansfield ’18
Owner of his own website, assistant principal flutist, president of the math honor society, Olympiad national finalist, and tutor, Christopher Scherban ’17 is the 2017 Staples High School salutatorian.
Being awarded salutatorian was initially a surprise to Scherban. After his sophomore year of putting in lots of effort and competing with Everett Sussman ’15, the valedictorian of 2015 and leading actor in Players, he ended with a 4.5 grade point average with the reaction, “is that good or anything?” Scherban was still unsure how Staples worked at the time but was told shortly after that he was in the running for the spot, “and it kind of just happened.”
Scherban ’17 excels both in and out of the classroom as he devotes himself to his extracurriculars. Scherban has been playing the flute since the fifth grade and has worked his way to become the assistant principal flutist for the Greater Bridgeport Youth Orchestra.
“It’s nice to create sound, to make something new out of nothing. I mean that’s the big thing with me going into programming. I’ll be creating something out of nothing for my whole life, breathing new life into old hardware, just as one does with a wind instrument,” Scherban said. “And when in the right mood, oh where it takes me. It’s like an escape.”
When not focusing on the flute Scherban spends his free time tutoring, teaching coding, and working on his website, mycompace.com.
Scherban created mycompace.com in August with the idea to create a site for technical assistance with the target audience of elderly people. The website allows users to ask for technical help and get paired up with an assistant, who lives in the similar region, to come fix the problem.
Additionally, Scherban pursued his interest in computer programming as a camp counselor at the national computer camp, which was the first computer camp in the world. He also taught himself a class on machine learning by Stanford University just by watching videos.
Scherban said that his experience creating his website and discovery of his love for coding helped him decide that he will major in computer science with a concentration in artificial intelligence, machine learning and human computing when he attends Georgia Institute of Technology in the fall.
However, deciding the direction of his major was not always a straight path for Scherban. “Last year, I wanted to be a math major. The year before, I wanted to be an accountant. Before that, I wanted to be a chemistry major, and even before that I wanted to go into the military because of their really good engineering corps,” Scherban ’17 said, “I even wanted to be a physics major with computing, a politics major and an economics major.”
Other than his many achievements and high GPA, Scherban’s friends describe him as unexpected and unique.
“He can come off as awkward at first and kind of playful and jokes around a lot” Cece Hong ’18, one of Scherban’s close friends, said. “But he’s one of the nicest people I know. He’s always there for me and our conversations are always super fun,” Hong added. “He does things in a ‘Chris’ way so much that it’s kind of unmistakably him, which I think is awesome.”