Orin McNare is an 18-year-old senior at LHS who transferred from Japan with his family his freshman year. After that major change, he said some of his biggest accomplishments in high school have been passing his classes and becoming friends with other students.
When he first arrived at LHS, a lot of other kids already knew about him because he transferred from Japan, where he lived his whole life up until his freshman year. He wasn’t used to the environment, he said, and he had to adapt to a completely different culture. That discouraged him from introducing himself to more people, so he ended up keeping to himself for the most part.
That was until he became a teacher’s aide, and started being more social with people in the classes he was helping. As a senior, he commented that he wishes he had done more extracurricular activities, and he recommended Gardening Club for the underclassmen or incoming freshmen.
A big inspiration for McNare has been Adam Cadez-Schmidt, a PE teacher here. McNare said he never enjoyed PE classes, but reported that the way that Cadez-Schmidt ran his class and the activities they did made the class enjoyable. All that encouraged him to participate more often.
Logan Fitting, a senior at LHS and a close friend of McNare’s, reported that he is an amazing friend. They used to go to Sonic every day after school and talk for hours, and both ended up working at Spot On, a frozen yogurt shop in Lewiston.
For McNare, making food has always been part of his life, and over the years the practice has paid off as he has continued to increase his skills.
“I want to move back and ideally go to college in Japan and major in Culinary,” reported McNare.
He said the cities in Japan are more familiar to him, and he wants to create a life there again. However, there’s still plenty of room for visiting Lewiston.
Looking back at the end of high school, McNare said he wished that he had focused more on school as a whole, instead of putting his assignments off until the last minute. But Hilary Gruehl-Laughrey, an English teacher at LHS, helped change that for him. She pushed him to try harder and put in the work for things she knew he could do with a little motivation.
Before McNare graduated from LHS he had this advice: “Try to do everything you can.”
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