“Tenacious, loving and just,” is how Desi Pritchard, sophomore Rowan O’Brien’s teacher from fourth to eighth grade, describes him. “If Rowan wants to learn something, he learns everything about it.”
O’Brien didn’t take the usual route to Lincoln. He attended a small private school, then traveled the world for a year with his family while taking online classes as a freshman.
He enrolled at Lincoln as a sophomore this fall. He says his first thought upon seeing Lincoln was “is that a tech startup?” because of the architecture of the building.
O’Brien’s favorite class is IB Chemistry with Mr. Watson, because he loves the teacher and the logic of science.
O’Brien values how close his family is and how much they talk to each other. He loves spending time with his younger brother Calvin, who is 13, and he views his dad as a role model.
“[I look up to] my dad because he’s a nice guy,” O’Brien said. “He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, and he has fun with his hobbies. He enjoyed his job [as a radiologist] before he retired.”
O’Brien’s family loves traveling. On their trip around the world last year, they visited many places across Europe and South America, and O’Brien enjoyed exploring.
“I got to walk on a glacier [in Norway],” O’Brien said. “I went to Greece and spent a week learning how to sail on the Aegean. [In Peru] I walked the Inca Trail, [which is] a mountainous 50-kilometer hike to Machu Picchu over four days.”
O’Brien’s life motto is from a “Rick and Morty” episode.
“There’s this one quote from ‘Rick and Morty’ where Rick yells at a bunch of people: ‘Your boos mean nothing, I’ve seen what makes you cheer,’ and that’s my policy when dealing with social media [and life],” O’Brien said.
