Morristown High School senior Victoria Lin has been studying valedictory speeches to prepare for hers on Thursday. She attended one that really impressed her.
Nipun Mehta, founder of ServiceSpace.org, told the University of Pennsylvania’s graduating class last month about trekking through India on a dollar a day.
“He told us, ‘Walk, don’t run. When you run, you miss too many things,'” said Victoria, better known as Tori.
Fat chance!
Tori Lin may be the closest thing yet to a perpetual motion machine. Her idea of a relaxing summer is teaching English in Thailand and visiting relatives in Taiwan before dashing to Princeton this fall.
“I’m just busy all the time,” she said this week, during a 20-minute break from a whirlwind tour of New York art museums and Broadway shows, sandwiched around slices of speech editing for her June 21 commencement address at Mennen Arena.
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Tori has become something of an expert in time management. As in: Homework in the car, homework at physical therapy, homework at doctor appointments.
“Everywhere, I’ve managed to get something done,” she said.
And how! Along with all those A’s on her report card, the valedictorian has managed to squeeze in three years on the fencing team, debates with the forensics team, viola performances with assorted school ensembles, mentoring of disadvantaged kids in the Neighborhood House string orchestra, and teaching art and science workshops as a volunteer at the Morris Museum.
She even banged out a story or two for MorristownGreen.com.
Extracurricular activities chew up about 60 hours a week, by her count. Which leaves just enough down time to cook Indian and Chinese specialties and devour postmodern expressionist fiction by David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon.
English, history, science and math–she can’t really choose her favorite subject. Tough problem, eh? She hopes for a career that taps multiple disciplines: Consulting, perhaps, or some sort of analytical endeavor.
Fourteen scholarships, awarded by organizations ranging from the Junior League to firefighters, will help underwrite that quest.
So far, the only casualty of Tori’s frenetic lifestyle is her boyfriend of four years. “We broke up,” she said. “We were too busy.”
Tori attributes her high school success to an adult mindset.
“I went through my teenaged angst stage in middle school,” she said with a laugh. “In 7th grade it was, ‘Woe is me.’ By the time I got to high school, it was like, ‘This is so petty.'”
The only child of two electrical engineers, Tori actually began college in the 4th grade, attending summer “nerd camp” at Mount Holyoke.
Run by the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, nerd camps are where “socially awkward kids congregate” and learn about crystals and polymers, philosophy and international politics, she said. Tori has spent summers at Skidmore College and Princeton, and taken courses for credit at Harvard.
The other thing working in her favor is a casual acquaintance with neatness; she doesn’t waste time sweating the small stuff.
“I wish I was neater, so my room would not look like a disaster,” she said.
Or maybe not.
“I’m happy with a little bit of chaos,” Tori confessed. “I usually fly by the seat of my pants. I like the chaos. I like the excitement of it.”
