Carolina Uribe-Gosselin has had an interesting high school career.
The Palmetto High School senior started at the Terra Environmental Research Institute where she was in the bio-medical program. She also was the sophomore class president and a member of the lacrosse team. Between Palmetto and Terra, Uribe- Gosselin moved to Canada with her mother and brother because her brother was attending the University of British Columbia. He was a student at Terra for the first three years and then applied for early admission and was accepted to the university for his senior year.
While Uribe-Gosselin was excited about the move to Canada, she came back to South Florida before the school year ended.
“I loved Canada, but the education there is surprisingly slow,” she says. “They don’t even offer advanced placement.”
When she moved back to Miami, she decided against going back to Terra because she had missed too much of the biomedical program she had been taking. She enrolled in Palmetto instead and joined the television production class. This year, she is vice president of the TV production class and in the spring, she plans to join the school’s lacrosse team. She’s also hoping to work in an Advanced Placement Computer Science online class through the Florida Virtual School. The computer science class will help her get started on a career in coding and graphic design.
To fulfill her community service requirements, Uribe-Gosselin decided to volunteer at Miami Children’s Hospital. She chose to volunteer there because she could work with the kids.
“I noticed they had a special events program, so I filled out an application,” she says.
When she goes to MCH, she doesn’t go empty handed. Between visits, she collects coloring books and crayons for the children. “Every time I go in, I bring in boxes,” she says.
She has 30 collection boxes set up around Palmetto High to collect donated coloring books and crayons.
“I have them in all the English classes,” she says. “Some teachers offer an extra credit A to students (for the donations) and some give extra points on tests.”
The coloring books and crayons are donated to Radio Lollipop at the hospital and used for arts and crafts, and as giveaway prizes by Radio Lollipop.
“Almost every single week day, they have hours open where kids can come in and work on arts and crafts,” she says.
Uribe-Gosselin is good at helping the kids with the arts and crafts because she has such a personal love for art. Until now, she took art classes because creating art helped her relive stress. Now, she creates art for her online business – Abstract and Co. — which she started with a friend.
They create custom art for clients on items such as cell phone cases.
“We make jewelry and someone even gave us their skateboard to paint.,” she says. “We will do what a person wants.”
Her art is unusual land she says she prefers to draw abstract lines.
“It can be any color,” she says. “Or straight black lines. It’s just bizarre, a lot of lines going on.”
Although Uribe-Gosselin loves art and has taken numerous art classes, she doesn’t plan on majoring in art in college. Instead, she wants study computer science. Her dream school is to attend the University of Chicago, but she is also applying to the University of Colorado in Boulder and the College of William and Mary.
— By Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
