Robert James Rietdyk was selected to be the recipient of the Small School District's Association Lucerne Valley scholarship for many reasons; he is well-read, articulate, quizzical and an inspiration to other students. He is not a conveyor belt kid, he is pieces of those that he meets, pieces of his experiences, and is grateful to be a small town kid. He shared that for 2 years he attended school in a different, larger district, and it was during his time in this district, slipping through the cracks, that his appreciation for his previous smaller district really developed and he was able to return to us.
Robert is a 1 of 40 seniors for the class of 2022 and with a 4.14 GPA his dreams of becoming a nuclear physicist are within his reach. He says that his current plans include enlistment with the Navy. However, he is keeping a VVC option open, as a contingency plan.
Ultimately, he wants to return to Lucerne Valley and be a landowner. “ I want to go out and explore, be a dreamer, but with my feet planted firmly on the ground. And what ground could be better than the ground where my roots are?”
On February 10th, Robert was presented with his $500 SSDA Scholarship by the Lucerne Valley USD's Board of Trustees. Robert was introduced by LVMHS Principal Kelly Boeing.
Small town, large minds.
Hills & valleys, rising up and dipping down, a symbiotic dance, acting as a mirror to our lives as victories and hardships. We need one to have the other, and this journey would be without definition, without meaning, if it were all flat plains, void of the ebb and flow.
A word without a meaning is useless in speech, just as life is meaningless without the experiences, both good and bad, that we build off of to form the sentence of existence. Our experiences enable us, the people of Lucerne Valley, to come together and create eloquent yet durable bonds that we make with one another lifting each other up. These bonds that strengthen us, individually and as a community, are unseen and have fallen to oblivion in the eyes of larger city communities. We as a community have our flaws, just as all things, but unlike other things we work past it with one another. We not only endure, but we learn, we grow, and we prosper. We are Lucerne Valley.
-Robert Rietdyk
Robert Rietdyk received his award during the recent meeting of the Lucerne Valley USD's Board of Trustees.