For many students, math is daunting and often feels irrelevant, but for Bostyn Beal, Highland’s Math Sterling Scholar, math is a beautiful way to see the world.
Beal’s journey began when she was placed into honors math after excelling in her state math test, when she placed higher than the average student.
“I think part of the reason that I learned to love math was because I wasn’t always amazing at it,” Beal said. “I had to work toward being good at math, but I really started to love it my sophomore year when I was introduced to trigonometry, and I could just see it everywhere. I was always on Desmos, trying to figure it out, and I truly found my love for math when I saw how you could apply it to literally everything.”
Only a few years later, Beal and her family moved from Austin, Texas, to Salt Lake City, Utah in the middle of her sophomore year of high school.
“I think the transition for her was important – she moved from a very large high school where academics were king,” Ashely Beal, Beal’s mother, said. “The transition to Highland came at the perfect time. Her dream was always to be a part of the IB program. The program at Highland was much more accessible, and the school felt more like a community. It helped that the teachers at Highland really supported and took notice of Bostyn, as she often felt like she was lost in a sea of students back in Texas.”
Originally, Beal’s parents had been concerned about the impact the move would have on Beal’s social and educational life, but IB created a community that Beal could thrive in. This competitive, comprehensive, and challenging program allowed her to find a community during a time of great adjustment. Through this community she has made friends and gained mentors who support her academic goals.
“I love IB, [which is] not the most common take. I really like the community of it. There’s only about 30 of us, and so we all know each other, and in our cohort we’re all friends,” Beal said. “It’s definitely changed my high school experience for the better, because I moved here right before joining IB, [in the] middle of high school, and being able to join this community where everyone is like-minded and willing to go the distance for academics has been lovely.”
Part of the IB curriculum is writing an extended essay, which is an independent, university-level research project on a topic of the student’s choice. Beal, of course, chose to write hers on math. Her project was about the projection of irregular shapes and linear perspective based in computer graphics and projected geometry.
“I was finding that if you’re looking down a hallway, all the lines are diagonal and they come toward one point,” Beal said. “That’s something in art, but it’s also something that can be modelled in mathematics, and it’s really fascinating. Sometimes it doesn’t quite make sense to me, but it’s like a lot of fractions and stuff.”
But Beal’s love for math wasn’t the only thing that pushed her to apply for Sterling Scholar. Her grandfather, Jefferey Beal, was a Math Sterling Scholar at Bountiful High School many years ago, and she applied in part to pay tribute to him.
“Jeffrey Beal is her paternal grandfather. He loved math, particularly trig and calculus but his true passion was physics,” Ashley Beal said. “He was as proud of becoming Bountiful High School’s Math Sterling Scholar as he was of his many other academic accomplishments. He and Bostyn get to nerd out about equations together.”
With her senior year coming to a close, Beal looks forward to the many possibilities ahead of her. On the one hand, Beal is considering aiming for Masters in Engineering, but on the other hand she might go into mathematics, and then go on to get her Masters and PhD, hopefully at MIT.
“Bostyn will absolutely excel in a rigorous academic environment and will eventually distinguish herself in whatever field she chooses. Unlike most mathematically minded students, Bostyn can explain her rationale at differing levels of comprehension (an area where most expert adults still fall short),” Sarah Lea, Beal’s extended essay supervisor, said. “Bostyn is more than capable of commanding an audience and presenting complex topics in an engaging manner. I expect her impact on the world will be felt by all of us. Bostyn is unstoppable!”
