Of all the words that would best describes the life of Clear Fork High School senior Makayla Arnold, one word suffices: busy. In addition to school, athletics, college classes, and work, she is also preparing for participation in the Ohio Distinguished Young Women program.
Most days, the 17-year-old leaves her home in Butler around 7 a.m. and doesn’t return until around 10 at night. Her Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are filled with school, dance practice and basketball practice, and Tuesdays and Thursdays are jam-packed with more school, more dance practice, college classes at Ashland University, work at Brumby’s Coffeehouse and Pizzeria in Bellville, more basketball practice, and eventually sleep after finishing homework and other chores.
“Last night I got like two hours of sleep because I was doing laundry and homework because I knew I wouldn’t have time on Wednesday because Thursday I have a speech due, a paper due, a calculus exam; and it’s like every teacher put everything on Thursday,” Arnold listed off, exasperated but managing to stay on top of her hectic schedule.
The Distinguished Young Women of Ohio program, a national scholarship program for high school girls was yet another addition to her schedule. Arnold will represent Richland County at the program’s performance on Feb. 21 and 22 at Knox County Memorial Theater in Mount Vernon, OH.
Participants in the Distinguished Young Women program are judged based on five categories: scholastics, interview, talent, fitness, and self-expression. A participant’s interview and talent make up for 25 percent each of her total score, the largest amounts. Scholastics count for 20 percent of overall score, fitness for 15 percent and self-expression for 15 percent.
Arnold decided to participate in Distinguished Young Women after hearing about the program at school, and knowing a handful of past participants.
“I was like, ‘oh everybody else at school does this, so I’ll do it,’” she said with a shrug. “Some of my friends are like, ‘oh it’s so cool.’ I think a couple of them are actually coming to the show. And others are like you’re so busy and you’re just adding another thing to your plate.”
In October Arnold was named Miss Richland County during the preliminary rounds of the Distinguished Young Women program, and on February 15 she will travel to Mount Vernon to live with a host family for a week and prepare for the program’s performance on the 21 and 22.
“We spend the whole week doing community service and running through our fitness routines and rehearsals, and we have six or seven dinners and luncheons we have to go to,” said Arnold. “Wednesday and Thursday we rehearse Friday and Saturday nights’ show. All day Friday is interviews, Friday night is a performance, and the same thing happens on Saturday except instead of interviews we do community service.”
In a nutshell, Arnold said the girls are busy nonstop from about 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day – not too different from Arnold’s normal daily schedule.
“I like being busy, because it’s fast-paced and there’s no lull time, but that seven-day snow week was pretty nice,” she admitted.
Also similar to Arnold’s normal schedule is limited contact with her parents and siblings, of which she is one of 10. However, this time the limited contact is due to the program’s strict rules.
“We’re allowed to have a five-minute phone call with our parents every day and we can’t have visitors; it’s so strict that on Friday night after the show we can’t see or speak to anybody,” said Arnold.
The winner of the Distinguished Young Women program in February will win $5,000 to put towards any college of the winner’s choice and advance to the national competition in Alabama. For Arnold, that college would be Ashland University, where she has already completed almost a year and a half of her education. Arnold plans to double major in forensic chemistry and criminal justice and eventually work for the FBI as a forensic chemist.
“I’ve already been working in the major for a year and a half now, and I love it,” she said. “I like odd things; in eighth grade I went to crime camp and they had a staged crime scene. We dusted for fingerprints and learned how to forge handwriting, and that’s where I got my first instinct. That professor is actually still there, so I’m excited to finally start taking classes with him.”
While Arnold is a little stressed about missing a week of classes at both Clear Fork High School and Ashland University, she said she is looking forward to the skills she will learn through her participation in Distinguished Young Women.
“One of their mottos is have talent, have self-confidence, and have knowledge,” said Arnold. “They stress more being smart and being confident and being talented and being involved than they do ‘oh you’re beautiful and we’re going to go with that.’ It reminds me of Miss Ohio, minus the bathing suit portion–which I’m ok with.”
Arnold said the competition wouldn’t make or break her if she wins or loses, but there is one special award she is striving for.
“I guess the spirit award would be nice. It’s the award the girls give to one girl; kind of like ‘Miss Congeniality,’” she said. “At the preliminaries I dorked around, and everybody was so serious and I was like, lighten up the mood, lets be happy. I got some dirty looks. There are some girls that are very serious and I’m like, we can relax and smile!”
“We spend the whole week doing community service and running through our fitness routines and rehearsals, and we have six or seven dinners and luncheons we have to go to,” said Makayla Arnold.
