Wallace, a cadet, treats hard work like a habit.
MARK KESZLER
Nspire Today! Feature Writer
GERING – By the time most students head home, Frost Wallace is only halfway through his day. The Gering High School senior and senior class president splits time between two varsity sports, college coursework, and a cadet slot with the Gering Fire Department — plus a work-based learning rotation riding along in Scottsbluff. He describes the schedule with a shrug and a small grin: “School comes first. After lunch I go to college classes. Then it’s practice — four to six for tennis or wrestling. Nights are homework. If I’m free, I’ll catch a shift or training at the station.”
That steady drumbeat didn’t happen by accident. Wallace traces the spark to a conversation with his mom, Jamie, as he entered high school. “She told me a lot of kids try to float through,” he says. “You only have to do a little more, and you’ll be miles ahead. I wanted to show her I could do more.” He took the message literally: two college classes and two high-school classes each of the past two summers, stacking auto body, American history, environmental science, algebra, and statistics on top of everything else. He will graduate with an associate degree a week before high school graduation. “Statistics humbled me,” he admits. “I thought it was just formulas. It’s really the steps and the thinking.”
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