Interview With a High School Senior (Clara & Ella Carter-Klauschie)

Clara Carter-Klauschie holding a hula hoop and a bunny (2010)!

Clara Carter-Klauschie is a senior at Hamilton High School and the founder/Editor-in-Chief of Muse Magazine. They also serve as President of the Hamilton High Gender & Sexuality Alliance, VP of the Westside Youth & Government Delegation, Media Correspondent for the Youth Governor of CA, and Chair of the statewide Delegate Advisory Committee. Clara loves dancing, writing, creating pottery, and collecting funky stuff!

Ella and Clara Carter-Klauschie sat down together in their childhood home to discuss high school, college, the future, and more!

Ella: Can you tell me a little bit about how your year has been so far? 

Clara: I think it's been good to alright — somewhere within that spectrum. Definitely stressful with applying to college, but overall, I think that senior year academically has been a little less challenging. In terms of extracurriculars, I've put more pressure on myself, so that aspect has been a little more difficult. I'm not a big fan of writing emails all the time, and I've been writing a lot of emails, so maybe that's kind of a sign that in the future, I will also be writing a lot of emails, something I should probably get used to. I literally made an automatic signature I can click for all my Y&G emails. So that's fun. Overall, it's been an okay experience. I think that it's been difficult to keep up with friends because we're all pursuing our own activities, and also just working on college stuff and trying to figure things out.

Ella: Amid all of that, is there one major takeaway that you could highlight? 

Clara: Well, I can say that my takeaway has been... There are certain ways that I really like to write and certain ways that I hate. 

Ella: Wow, that is interesting. How has your semester been different than what you thought it would be like when you started in August? 

Clara: I thought that I was going to be more focused on the gravity of it being my senior year than I actually was. When I started the year, I was more freaked out about the fact that it was my senior year than I was when I was actually experiencing everything throughout the semester, because when you're busy, you don't really have time to actually keep track of, per se, these are my last moments on the Hamilton Quad (which was closed down for construction). I didn't actually think about that super intensely or what that would mean to me until I was looking at a fence, which was sad.

Clara (left) and Ella (right) (2011)!

Ella: Are there any ways that your outlook has changed from before the semester to now, at the end of the semester? 

Clara: I don't know if my outlook has changed in really significant ways. I think in terms of colleges, at the start of the semester, I was probably equally jaded about the process, but I didn't necessarily prepare myself for the reality of getting into schools, and then not really being able to be excited about a lot of them because of money. I think in my head, there was the possibility of merit aid, and that just seemed like the easy answer for some of these higher acceptance rate private schools. But when you actually get the decision back, you realize there's only a certain amount of merit money you can actually get, so it just doesn't end up being the same reality as the idealistic version I painted for myself. 

Ella: What's most important to you as we get to the end of 2025? 

Clara: I'd say just spending time with family over the break. I tend to be a very busy person, as you know. So, I think it's a good time over break to get to do that, as I don't have as much to do as I did during the semester. Overall, I’m always optimistic that I'll be less busy in the future, but then even when certain things fall away, usually I'm still busy. 

Ella: Where do you see yourself a year from now, next December? Not physically, not where are you going to college, but more emotionally or spiritually? 

Clara: That's a difficult question. I gotta think about that. 

Ella: It can even be as simple as, like, you're adjusted to a new place or something. 

Clara: Oh, sure. I'll say this. I think that no matter where I end up, at what college, it's definitely gonna be an adjustment in terms of living in a new place, and not only just the independence of that, but also experiencing a new setting, a new group of people. I think I get very in my bubble in certain ways. I like to be comfortable wherever I am. So getting out of that comfort zone is going to be difficult. But I think that it's gonna be, in a lot of ways, good to mature in that way and to be able to put myself into a new situation that I don't really know much of anything about and accept that uncertainty. 

Clara (left) and Ella (right) (2011)!

Ella: How often do you think about the future? And when you think about it, what are you picturing? 

Clara: I think about the future often in the sense that when I'm doing college applications, there's always an aspect of considering myself in the future. What do I think about the school, the city, the major, the whatever — but that's not necessarily imagining myself there in a very concrete sense. It's very hypothetical still. I'm not actually imagining myself walking through these different cities or living in a dorm. I don't often think about the future in a very intense or material way. It hasn’t become tangible yet. 

Ella: This is another question that's just occurring to me, but as someone going through the college application and decision process, do you think that the way that we talk about and fixate on college divorces the idea of college from material reality? Like, does it all exist in this idealistic place rather than a material place, which is what makes it such a shock when you get there?

Clara: I think definitely, yes. Just living within a peer group that's very fixated on college, I'm able to observe other high schoolers and witness their idealism related to college, along with the way they romanticize certain colleges and certain places. And then with myself, I definitely have a certain degree of that, but I think that just by virtue of having somebody else in my family go to college before me, some of that veil has been lifted, and I see how nothing, including college, can ever really turn out to be that idealistic. Parents always seem to look back on college through rose-colored glasses and think of it as the “good old days,” whereas somebody who's actually in college might have more of a nuanced perspective on it. So, being able to hear that nuanced perspective has changed how I view college. I view it with more pessimism, but that's also just my natural lean in certain situations. I don't think that our fixation on college is great for society either. It manifests in many ways. Very simply, just being constantly asked: Where are you gonna go for college? What do you want to do? It puts a lot of pressure on us when, really, I think that hardly anyone, except maybe the STEM people, is actually gonna end up doing what they think they're gonna be doing. So why not just be uncertain for a while and, like we've both been saying, get comfortable with that uncertainty? 

Clara (left) and Ella (right) on Halloween (2011)!

Ella: Are your applications going as you expected? Are they different? 

Clara: Uh, gosh. I don't really know what I expected in terms of getting application decisions. I think that for the colleges I have gotten accepted to so far, I was pretty confident that I would get in. One thing I have learned is that whenever it's an acceptance, they always do confetti. I know if I click on the little decision letter and it does confetti, I'm good. 

Ella: They do sad faces if you don't get it. Haha, no. 

Clara: They probably do nothing, right? So I guess I know that if I get nothing, I've been rejected. I didn't know there would be confetti constantly. A lot of confetti — that's fun. 

Ella: What will you miss when you graduate, and what won't you miss? 

Clara: I think that in a high school setting, it's really convenient to see your friends every day. Even just walking past people you know every day, that proximity. And also the campus, weirdly, is something I'll miss. I kind of romanticize Brown Hall. I'm not fully sure why, but I think there's something about brick. And I like the Yankee statue. It’s fun to me. Also, I really have liked being able to leave early for 7th period this year. That's one of my favorite things. There's no foot traffic, so I don't have to worry about having a slow walker in front of me. It's kind of a mundane thing. But what won't I miss? The toilet spraying at me. I have to get out the door before it sprays or hit the toilet flusher thing with my foot. Another thing that I won't miss is assignments that I don't see a point in. Busywork. But that's just a life thing. I won't name names, but I did once have to spend an hour answering riddles for my English class. And I really don't know why. 

Ella (left) and Clara (right) (2012)!

Ella: What does graduating mean to you? 

Clara: It means I get a diploma. Ooooo, I get to decorate my little cap. But, overall, it means that I'm starting a new chapter of life. It definitely feels like an ending in terms of this particular kind of schooling that I've been doing for, I'm not gonna do the math, how many years is that? Like 12 years? So, 12 years of my life have been spent living at home and then going to another place that's pretty close to my home to learn about things. Getting to make decisions about my life, not just in the sense of academic decisions or decisions about how I want to spend my time, but just every day decisions, like, quite literally, what will I eat for dinner, you know? Dinner has always felt like a very familial and communal thing where we all come together, which is a privilege of living at home for me. I’ll spend more time thinking about money and budgeting, but I guess that's less so graduation and more so starting college. 

Ella: What advice would you give to someone just starting high school? Or for Callum specifically?

Clara: For Callum, I’d say invest yourself in things you really care about and think about starting something. It's really worthwhile to create a passion project for yourself, whether that be a club or, quite literally, just something you want to commit to doing at least once a week. I just want him to find something that makes him happy to be at school. But more broadly, I don't think everyone can use the same advice in the same way, nor should the same advice be given to everyone. If you're someone who tends to overcommit yourself to things or put pressure on yourself, especially about college, I'd say try to shed some of that. Focus on the things you're actually passionate about, not what you think will look good to colleges. I know a lot of people who just do things because they want to put them on their college application, and that deeply irks me. So don't do that, do things you like to do. Also, don't get stressed about taking too many AP classes. In my opinion, AP classes should be about actually trying to master the subject in some way. Despite the college board’s iffiness, I think that AP classes have been worthwhile for me as a means of getting really invested in a subject. 

Ella: What would you like to ask the Magic 8 Ball? 

Clara: Oh no. Okay… Will I end up being a high school teacher? 

Ella: What do you want the answer to be? 

Clara: I don't know. Probably no, but I'm not really sure. 

Magic 8 Ball: My reply is no.