RHYS COLLINS~
In contrast to every other subject of this profile compilation, Rhys Collins looks toward college instead of back at it: He’s a junior at Coconino High School in Flagstaff, and he’s still not sure if college is for him.
Collins grew up in Flagstaff. His earliest memories are of his grandmother tragically dying of cancer when he was 5 years old and his father going to prison when he was 7 years old. Collins’ father was released two and a half years later. Slowly, they rekindled their relationship.
“It started out slow, but he got a lot better,” Collins said. “We talk and hang out a lot now.”
The busy daily schedule of a high school student like Collins, though, doesn’t allow much time for recreational socializing. In addition to his AP and IB classes, Collins spends time on his extracurriculars and hobbies.
Namely, Collins is an eSports competitor, a member of the student news station and an avid and accomplished chess player.
Junior at Coconino High School, Flagstaff
“I’ve been playing chess for almost my whole life,” Collins said. “My biggest accomplishment has been just getting from where I started to where I am now in terms of skill. That took a lot, and I’m really proud of how far I’ve come.”
Indeed, Collins has come a long way since started chess as a 4-year-old. Collins said he tied for second place in two state tournaments this year, took first place in the city for high school boys this year and last year and tied for first in northern Arizona this year. This May, he will compete in Super Nationals — he’s aiming to place in the top 50 in the country.
Another one of the continued interests in Collins’ life so far has been STEM programming — courses and clubs that focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — specifically in engineering clubs and classes. He was accepted to the MIT-e program at Sinagua Middle School, which helps students become competitive academic thinkers in STEM fields.
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For a while, Collins said, he thought he would pursue engineering professionally after high school, but he has had many dream jobs throughout his 17 years.
“I was super into STEM for a while, so engineering seemed like a good choice, but then I kind of lost interest when I entered high school,” Collins said. “Now, if I do go to college, I think I’d like to study something like journalism or maybe architecture. But my first ever dream job was to be a detective for the FBI.”
Collins said what turned him away from detective work was the likely prerequisite of being a beat cop. Then, he said he realized that investigative journalism is basically detective work without the violence or the consequences.
Despite knowing there are degree options available to him, Collins is still hesitant to take the jump into higher education. He said he has a small college fund and confidence he would qualify for scholarships, but he doesn’t know if even then the cost would be worth the degree.
“I don’t want to go to college if I know I’m going to have to go into debt,” Collins said. “It’s really hard to pay back, and a lot of people never do. But at the same time, I need to decide what I want to study if I do go. I’m not going to get a degree in something that I’m not interested in because then it’s just paying for four more years of high school.”
Looking toward the future, Collins said his ideal adult life is simply in a job that keeps him occupied and entertained without needing outside motivation. He could see himself living in Missouri or maybe California.
He is also considering the possibility of wanting a family one day. However, he mentioned that helping his mother take care of his adopted baby siblings — a 6-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy — makes him wary of wanting children of his own.
“My siblings take a lot out of me,” Collins said. “They’re really great birth control.”
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When thinking about his more immediate future, Collins said if he ends up going to college he would be likely to lean toward NAU. He said as a Flagstaff resident, his education would be incredibly affordable.
That doesn’t stop him from considering other things, though — Collins said if he got great scholarship offers, he would love to attend a school like University of Southern California, Mizzou University in Missouri or even Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.
Interestingly, Collins said he has seen his peers at Coconino High School start to make their post-graduation decisions: He estimated that about half of his graduating class was planning on going to college, but he personally thought that only half of that group would end up graduating with a degree.
Collins attributes that to the rapidly increasing prices of a college education combined with an overall lack of enthusiasm — he said the common agreement among his peers is that a college degree really isn’t necessary at all.
This conception could be due to the fact these students are living in quite the college town. Collins pointed out that having NAU in the city where you grow up does change your conception of higher education significantly.
“This town is growing with a lot of attention on what college students would like to do,” Collins said. “Disc golf has become a big thing, we have a bowling alley, a movie theater and stuff. But it also changes the politics here.”
Arizona is often regarded as a red-leaning state politically, but Collins said NAU is a big reason that Flagstaff is a firmly blue dot. He said it was important to notice that as the average age of Flagstaff’s population decreased, the intensity of liberal ideals and politics increased.
For Collins, the effects of higher education have hardly begun to rear their heads. The choices he makes in the next few years will determine the course of the rest of his life, and regardless of whether he decides to pursue a professional degree or not, it’s Collins’ move on the chessboard that is life.