Senior Kiyoko ‘Kik’ Hayano is a student to be celebrated. Throughout her high school career, she has been extremely involved with different communities in PHS, excelling in band, academics, robotics, athletics, and much more. Hayano will be attending MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] starting this fall. MIT is a highly prestigious tech school that only accepts roughly 4% of applicants. Hayano has paved a path of success to get accepted there and has high goals for her future.

Q: What has been your most notable memory of high school?

A: “Probably sometime during swimming,” Hayano said. “I’ve swam for years and really, really enjoyed it and had a great time. A big memory for me was when one of my relays was top three at conference. I really enjoyed that.” 

Q: Where are you going to college and why did you choose that college?

A: “I’m planning to head to MIT,” Hayano said. “It has been my dream college and I have wanted to be an engineer ever since I was little. So I’ve dreamed of going to MIT for a really long time. I really like the expectation of hard work and I like the fact that I am going to go there and it’s going to be the hardest thing that I will ever do in my life.”

Q: What do you plan on majoring in?

A: “I plan on majoring in mechanical engineering. I’ve wanted to be an engineer for a really long time, I just wasn’t sure what kind,” Hayano said. “This year, I started taking some CAD and design classes and I figured out that I really liked that. For mechanical engineering, I know that there’s a really hefty design part to it. It is also the broadest field of engineering you can go into, so it feels like there would be a lot of opportunities for me to find jobs that I could really enjoy in the future.

Q: What has been your biggest driving factor to do well in school?

A: “Part of it was my parents,” Hayano said. “They have really helped set expectations for excellence. I also just want to do the best that I can at academics. It’s been something I’ve been good at since I was little and I decided early on that upon entering high school, it [school] was my job. I don’t work during the school year and so I made it clear to myself that this would be my job and my payment would be college.”

Q: What do you look forward to most in your upcoming year at MIT?

A: “I really look forward to meeting new people,” Hayano said. “I think going into MIT it’s going to be meeting some amazing, brilliant people who will just knock my socks off. They’re going to be so smart. So I really enjoy that and I look forward to meeting a peer group that is going to be so much smarter than I am.”

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to touch on in terms of presence at PHS?

A: “I just think I’m really grateful for the help that my teachers have given me,” Hayano said. “My STEM teachers, especially Mr. Stenlund have helped me out a lot. And my old counselor Mrs. Curtis, who’s now SLC, she has been a really big help and very supportive through my entire high school career.”