Meet Marcela Dominguez, a proud and enthusiastic sophomore here at Santaluces Community High School. She goes by the nickname “lela” and loves participating in school activities, especially spirit week! Although she likes having fun through participating and dressing up, she makes sure to always keep in mind her most important goal of all; excelling in school. She takes school very seriously, as a daughter of two immigrant parents. She expresses that all she wants to do is make them proud, as any other child would want to.

When asked what helps her focus in school, she responded with music. She feels like music is her safe space and that she can do anything while listening to music. “Music helps me with stress and anxiety when I can’t focus on an assignment,” Marcela states. She also loves to draw, which helps her to focus and memorize school material.

Marcela has always known which college she wants to go after high school. She is set on going to the University of Florida, as her older brother graduated from there. He is now a doctor. She looks up to her brother as she saw him as a father figure while growing up. Marcela states, “ I really just want him to be proud of me, I see how he accomplished everything he ever wanted to do, and I want to be exactly like him.”  She explains that in contrast to him, she wants to major in business as she feels like she excels in mathematics and is interested in working with numbers. She dreams of running her own business one day. 

Her hobbies include reading and cleaning. As odd as it sounds, she finds peace in cleaning and organizing things around her house. She loves reading different books of different genres. Her favorite genres of books include romance and fiction. Her all time favorite book, and coincidentally her favorite movie series, is Harry Potter.