The Barrhead community has many programs that highlight or benefit its residents, and one of those is the Student of the Month, sponsored in part by the Barrhead &District Chamber of Commerce, as well as local businesses.
Thomas Dittmer, 17, a Grade 12 student at BCHS and originally from Ontario, was nominated by his employer, Sanderman’s Home Hardware and earned himself a gift certificate from De Herdt Gardens.
“I like math a whole lot, and physics, but I want to go into actuarial science and become an actuary,” Dittmer said, adding an actuary is a person who deals with insurance and looks at statistics.
“I heard about it in Grade 10 or 11 when I was looking into math-related careers,” he said. “My cousin is one and I thought I might enjoy it as well.”
According to Dittmer, he likes math so much he took Math 30 twice just to raise his grade percentage.
“When I lived in Ontario I was home-schooled for three years and I really liked math. I thought that was normal. I saw all these tv shows where all the students in the shows were like ‘Ah, math is terrible!’ but I thought it was just made-up. Then I went to public school and found out everyone hates math. I don’t get it.”
Dittmer said one of his former teachers won a calculus book for herself and ended up passing it on to him which only fuelled his desire to play with numbers.
“I managed to go through one of the more complicated problems and came up with my own equation to solve it that worked,” he said, adding although he read through the entire book, that one problem is the only one he managed to solve.
Dittmer said he likes to play football and is finishing up his last year with the Westlock T-Birds.
“I was going to play next year too if I could have split my Grade 12 year into two semesters, but the school wouldn’t allow that,” he added.
Dittmer explained he is currently looking at attending one of three schools – the University of Calgary, or either the University of Alberta, or MacEwan University, both in Edmonton, but said the choice will really come down to whichever is closest to home and which one offers the courses he is looking for.
“I recently got accepted to the university of Calgary but I’m still waiting on the other two, so I haven’t made a decision yet,” he said, adding it is a toss-up for him between the universities of Calgary and Alberta due to availability of a football program and competition for courses.
