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Mariska Personality Profile
TUE. |5-7-24| FEATURES
It’s common in high school to come across people who simply roll through the motions. It’s rare to find someone who embraces the present and is focused on the here and now, but senior Mariska Little is such a person, full of a charisma that people seek to encounter in their day-to-day lives.
Little likes to follow a purpose and chase her aspirations. With hobbies like painting and cooking, and unique accomplishments like winning Miss. School Spirit, Little has a personality that can captivate every crowd.
Growing up, Little’s late grandmother was a prominent role model in her life. Throughout childhood, her grandmother played an important part in her story. Some of her most vivid moments and fondest memories involved her.
“[I remember] going to the strawberry patch and picking out strawberries with my grandma.” Little said.
Through the grief of her grandmother’s passing, Little made that experience an opportunity for her to continue to grow and live life to the fullest.
“She taught me how to make a lot out of a little.” Little said.
Throughout the rough times in her life, Little’s charismatic presence continues to inspire the community around her.
“She helps me in class when we’re in math, civics, and psychology,” senior Deona Boaten said. “She helps me learn and better myself as a student.”
Boaten and Little’s friendship sparked in middle school but their connection strengthened when they shared an English class their sophomore year.
“She’s just so funny and light-hearted,” Boaten said, “It really helped me when I was going through tough times.”
Little’s familiarity with heartache and despair has helped her relate to people more emotionally. She’s also made it her mission to spread kindness to others in simple ways, like her smile.
“Smiling at people; just smile at folks,” Little said, “Sometimes they need a smile.”
Her kindness radiates with simple gestures like this and embodies who she is. Throughout high school, she never kept her kindness exclusive but shared it with everyone.
“I’m not in any cliques, actually, I just float,” Little said, “I can pretty much get along with everybody [and] anybody.”
With such an easy-going personality, she is still dedicated and intentional regarding her future.
“I’m going to Wayne Community College and enrolling in the dental hygienist program in the fall.”
Little, with aspirations to go into the medical field, will be helping others gain the same confidence she embraces.
She shows that there truly is beauty through the suffering and that kind of light is igniting the path she’s traveling down toward her bright future.
“It was never anything subtle, I was openly treated differently because of my hair color,” Mullen said. “It feels like an identifying characteristic of mine, but it is not what I would identify myself as.”
For women in particular, their red hair also often comes with a stereotype of being unique or exotic. Alexander has noticed this treatment in comparison to her siblings.
“People come up to me in public and start grabbing my hair like ‘oh my God, is this your natural hair color, you know people pay for that color’,” Alexander said. “People are always up in my business, grabbing me, touching my hair, just giving more interest in me than my siblings because of my hair color.”
This behavior Alexander has experienced has caused her to wish she had a different hair color at certain points.
“With today’s beauty standards, …I wanted to be blonde for the longest time because I wanted to look like all the other pretty blonde girls,” Alexander said.
Along with Alexander, Cole feels the ideal appearance for a girl in her generation would be blonde hair and blue eyes. This was harder for her to overcome because of the other women most prominent in her life.
“Growing up in a family where my mom and sister were both blonde, people would make fun of me because they said I was adopted, even though my grandfather has red hair,” Cole said.
Being a ginger, people commonly correlate the hair color to be paired with fair skin and freckles. However, a lesser known connection is the MC1R gene, which is known to sometimes affect one's pain tolerance and the effectiveness of different medications.