He had everything going for him. Eli Tatum, a junior at a well-respected private high school in Reno, Nevada, was the epitome of a hard-working and high achieving student. Not only did Eli maintain superior grades in the most challenging of classes, he was also a spectacular athlete, musician and person. He was the type of student the school advertised on their website and on the pamphlets they distributed around the school and local community. Eli represented all that Sierra High School expected from their students and much, much more. Like most students at his high school, Eli was involved, and possibly over-indulged in extra-curricular activities. A valuable asset on the school’s nationally ranked tennis team and the school band’s first-chair saxophonist, the majority of Eli’s time was usually consumed of participating in these activities. This, he was used to. …show more content…
Eli’s friends were like-minded individuals. Eli was stressed but willing to have fun. His group of friends, while not being a group of partiers, put their free time to use. In his high school, there were two distinct groups that separated the smart students. The “bookworms” were the wicked smart students that focused their attention only on academics and not on social or extracurricular activities. The second group, sometimes referred to as the “hybrids” was the group Eli and his friends fell into. Hybrids were intellectual students that could balance many different trades admirably. These were like the the five-tool baseball players of the school, but instead of being masters of baseball skills, these were students that mastered academics as well as other activities: the athletics, the music and arts, etc. These were the students the school advertised on their website the most. Eli was quite the