unmi Adefila was born in Nigeria. After a three-year stop in Michigan, she and her family landed in North Carolina. The soft-spoken Early College tenth grader now looks forward to her next semester taking college classes.
“I came to Early College originally because my parents wanted me to challenge myself more and it was two years of free college,” Adefila said. “At first, it was kind of shaky. It got better, this year actually. I’m looking forward to going to the college part of it.”
Academically, Adefila is a solid student. “She is good-I mean, not just okay or wavering-she makes solid grades every time,” said Early College math teacher Valerie Bouldin. “Her effort is outstanding, even in the things that are not necessarily her forte.”
Adefila is also sure of her own abilities.
“I have bad time management and I procrastinate a lot,” she said. “But I always manage to get it done.”
Adefila sits with her hands folded together on the table during my interview with her. She answers each question thoughtfully in a faint voice, but is confident in what she says.
Her quiet nature, it seems, is deceiving. “She can be really goofy sometimes even though she seems quiet,” said Adefila’s older sister, Toyin. “She enjoys having fun.”
“We’re really close,” said friend Quintin Newkirk, who is also an Early College tenth-grader. “We’ve been in a lot of the same classes since freshman year. She’s mostly quiet, but she talks more around her friends.”
“She is funny, and she’s quiet,” agreed Bouldin. “So unless you’re really listening to her, you’ll miss all this sarcasm and wit that she just spits out.”
Like so many Early College students, Adefila fills her time outside of school with activities. She plays violin in the junior Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, and last summer, she went to the Academic All-Star camp with Newkirk. She is also part of a Nigerian kids club.
“We do a cultural day, and this year we did a fashion show and a Nigerian play,” Adefila said. “Parts of it were in the native language. The kids organized it all by ourselves. Sometimes we do a cultural dance show, and we perform every year during the Oduduwa (unity) Day.”
“The play was about remembering where you come from,” said her sister Toyin, who also participated in the show.
“She has been active in four clubs,” Bouldin said. “To be in four of them, that’s a lot. The workload here is no joke.”
Adefila’s goals include making the Greensboro Symphony Youth Orchestra and eventually finding something she wants to do as an occupation. “I’m not sure what that is yet,” Adefila said. “Maybe something in the medical field.”
“I don’t know if she’s found her niche yet-I don’t think she knows what her major’s going to be,” Bouldin said. “She’s got science and math parents. I think the coolest thing about being here is that she’s going to have the opportunity to say, ‘well, I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ and that’s the best place for people who aren’t sure. Go to college.”
“I don’t plan on taking a really hard work load; it’s a lot of work right now,” Adefila said. “I want to take a few music classes and something interesting besides only academic classes.”
“She can take a course in statistics, in music, in glassblowing, all in the same semester and figure out what her personal flow is,” Bouldin said. “Either way, she’s got the equipment to figure it all out.