Skwirz

SMITHFIELD — Ask Megan Skwirz what the most challenging thing about high school was and she’ll respond without hesitation

“Connecting with people, socially.”

For Skwirz, the stuff that other students spend the majority of their high school lives trying to get right –– the academics, the sports, the extracurricular activities –– came relatively easy.

She did as much as could be reasonably asked of a high schooler. Not only was she top of the class when she graduated from Smithfield High School this year, Skwirz played three sports, sang in the chorus, and volunteered as a teacher and coach.

“Megan has always been very driven and goal oriented,” said her mother, Michelle.

But what came tough to her was turning off the competitiveness that made those things come easy. “I’m not the most outgoing person,” Skwirz admits. “People find me intimidating. Sometimes I can act like nothing bothers me.”

She worked out the kinks in high school. Today, Skwirz has a different outlook on life than she did four years ago as a freshman. She feels she knows her flaws and has worked to temper them.

“Before I could not take criticism or listen to other people’s arguments,” she said. “That’s all changed.”

Part French-Canadian, Polish, and Irish, Skwirz is the second daughter of William and Michelle Skwirz. Her father works for UPS and her mother runs an informal daycare for some of her friends and relatives at her home. She has a sister, Michaela, 22.

At Smithfield High, Skwirz played varsity soccer, basketball and threw the discus and javelin on the track and field team. She was All Division in those sports as well as All State Academic in basketball.

She was a member of the All State Choir and a member of the French National Honor Society.

Much of her volunteer work outside of school involved children. She was a coach for the town’s youth soccer league, a religious-education teacher at her parish, St. Michael Church in Smithfield, and a French teacher at a local elementary school.

Skwirz said she’s become accustomed to dealing with children because of her mother and the fact that there are always children around the house. “It’s fun to see kids experiencing something for the first time, and it’s rewarding to know that you’re a part of it,” she said.

Skwirz also took an interest in the environment in high school.

Part of it was seeing how much people wasted in school, from sheets of paper to plastic bottles. “My friends know that around me, they’ve got to recycle,” she said.

Still another part was completing a multimedia project on deforestation in her second year. “That’s when I really got into it,” Skwirz said. “Now it’s almost every day that I think of things like that.”

This fall, Skwirz will be enrolling at Holy Cross, in Worcester, Mass., where she may study political science. But her concern for the environment has her considering work as an intern at one of the government agencies dealing with those issues, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In April, Skwirz traveled to France with her fellow French-language students. It was her first time out of the country. Paris’ rich culture, the cobblestone streets and the sidewalk cafes entranced her.

“It made me love the language even more,” she said. Skwirz plans to continue her French studies in college, and possibly spend more time in France.

Ultimately, Skwirz is interested in getting her law degree, though she’s not sure yet if she’ll go right from college into law school.

Looking back at her four years at Smithfield High, Skwirz said that the first two of those years were “the most stressed out.” She wanted to be the top of her class, and she knew it was within her reach, so she sweated out every exam, every paper and homework assignment.

“It was a competitive thing,” Skwirz shrugs.

But around junior year, Skwirz said she made a conscientious effort to calm down. She looked at her own personality flaws. She admits she has a tendency toward sarcasm. “When people understand my humor, they like me better,” she said.

Books that she was exposed to in English literature class enforced what she was feeling about society and how people relate to each other. Pretty soon, her worry over academics faded, to a degree.

“I started looking at the bigger picture,” she said. The tests and assignments “were an important part of my life, but I tried not to stress out about it. I reminded myself that it would work out.”

This summer, Skwirz will be working at Bonnet Shores Beach Club, in Narragansett, as well as an occasional job serving baked goods at the Pastry Gourmet’s concession stand at WaterFire in Providence.

She’s excited that soon she’ll be forced to “face reality” and be “self-sufficient.”

“College is going to be about experiencing and figuring out what I love and what I need to continue to succeed,” she said.

pmarcelo@projo.com