Camille Estimé '09
Renaissance Woman
Camille Estimé says she is probably the only person on Earth without a Facebook page. Well, maybe the only teenager on Earth. Just because everyone else is doing something is no reason why Camille thinks she should.
“People get sucked into it,” she said. “I want my social life to be face to face. Facebook connects people who aren’t close friends. I’m going to talk to my friends anyway.”
According to Camille’s French teacher, Katrina Perry, that’s classic Camille.
“She is an independent thinker,” Katrina said. “I can always count on her to come up with something original.”
Camille came to OES in the Ninth Grade from Arbor School, where she was in a class of 16 students. In the last four years, she has enjoyed being able to experience a wide variety of ideas and activities. For example, instead of specializing in one athletic activity, she has played soccer, learned fencing, practiced aikido, and participated in a dance activity. Her academic interests have been equally varied, from studying two languages to pursuing interests in the humanities, biology, and math. Part of the attraction of all these subjects is getting to know the teachers.
“My teachers are so interesting,” she said. “My English teacher is also my aikido teacher and lived in Japan, and my math teacher was a professional ballet dancer.”
That would be Art Ward and Colin Day, respectively, and Colin says that Camille, though at first somewhat quiet, always has interesting things to say.
“The amazing thing about Camille is that she can converse knowledgeably on almost any topic,” Colin said. “She is not just a specialist in one area like some people but knows a lot about a lot of things. She is a true liberal arts thinker.”
Her broad interests no doubt have been stimulated by her family background, with branches coming from Norway and Haiti, and from her travels, which have ranged from the Cook Islands in the South Pacific to the Arctic Circle in Norway, with stops in many places in between. In the future, she plans to deepen many of her interests while taking on new ones. She will attend Stanford University in the fall where she wants to pursue her interest in business and entrepreneurship while also continuing to dance and learn French. And she plans to keep up with some of her OES friends … but probably not via Facebook.
