On May Day, I sat down with two alumni who spoke to students at the newly established Life After Lakeside alumni panels. Dahlia Mak ‘92, a healthcare consultant, and Bethany Mito ‘96, an immigration attorney at her own practice, were kind enough to donate their time to have a conversation with me about their time at Lakeside and the influence that it had on the people they are today.
For both alumni, their time at Lakeside was more than just academics—it was a launchpad for discovering and deepening their interests. Mak explained that the service requirement led her to volunteer at a local hospital, where she performed tasks such as helping escort patients, transporting blood proxy time, and filling out paperwork. “I became really fascinated by how health systems take care of patients, so I went back every summer to go and experience a different place and that just gave me exposure to how these systems function,” she said. For Mito, the value came from Lakeside’s proactiveness in establishing interdisciplinary classes. “My time at Lakeside really opened my perspective to subject matters and inferences that I don’t think that I would have been exposed to had I gone to a different school,” Mito said. She also recalls that at the time, Lakeside was one of the few schools that taught classes combining multiple subjects together, and remembers that interdisciplinary approach being very exciting to be exposed to as a young student, and also preparing her well for college. For Mito, it was the past senior elective “Time and Space,” taught by Mr. Doelger and Mr. Jamison, that she enjoyed “more than any other because it combined history and English, and really opened [her] mind to future possibilities as far as studies and career went.”
Both alumni also agreed that Lakeside helped prepare them for their careers and enabled them to tackle the challenges that they would later face in the professional world. Mak shared that Lakeside provided her with the opportunity to “think big” about how she could make a difference in the world. “The academic experience and social environment were a really solid foundation,” Mak added. “Looking back, I was really well equipped to go to college to be able to be able to handle the different types of coursework and be able to analyze, synthesize, and demonstrate knowledge.” Similarly, Mito recalled having a lot of intellectual freedom at Lakeside, noting that “having intellectual freedom when you’re a teenager really opens your mind to the possibilities of what you could do, instead of foreclosing and narrowing the choices.” She added that she believes Lakeside was at the forefront at that time of creative approaches to language learning and writing, and the latter would serve to benefit her greatly throughout her career post-graduation.
Throughout my conversations, a recurring theme was Lakeside’s commitment to service — one that remains to this day — and the impact that it had on their identity and values. Mak explained that her time at Lakeside instilled in her the culture and value of service, noting that to this day, she feels a big desire to give back to her community, make a meaningful difference, and help organizations and people grow and improve. Mito shared a similar outlook, detailing that Lakeside’s commitment to service informed her continuation of volunteering throughout her college and graduate school years. “Lakeside’s commitment to community service and service learning was something that was very present, even in the 1990s,” Mito recalled. “In addition to the work that I do professionally to sustain myself, volunteering is a huge component of who I am as a person, and I think that commitment to service really started at Lakeside.” This commitment to service and community ended up significantly influencing Mito’s career several years after she graduated, when she was deciding with her husband Nelson Lee what direction to take her legal career. “It was very important to us to mirror our heritage and give back to our community, and because of that we chose to shift gears with both of our legal careers and open up our own law practice.”
Furthermore, Lakeside’s community which creates lasting friendships and strong relationships with teachers was spoken of fondly by both alumni. “A big piece has been… the sense of community here at Lakeside that, despite all these years, is always a welcoming environment,” Mak noted. “The early friendships that I developed at Lakeside provided that early network and the opportunity to call upon your peers for insights and support.” Mito added that within her class, everyone was like family and on relatively good terms. “Everyone used to support each other and show up at games… a lot of us used to walk down the street to the convenience store and buy stuff, or jump in someone’s car and go for lunch somewhere.” Mito also recalled that Lakeside teachers’ open-door policy not only allowed her to have a lot of intellectual freedom, but to cultivate bonds with her teachers. Mito affectionately spoke of one teacher in particular—Latin instructor Kenneth Van Dyke, known as KVD to his students— that she deeply appreciated. “You could just show up at any time of the day when he wasn’t in a class and have a talk with him about Ovid or something that you were having trouble translating,” Mito explained. “I think that the relationships that a lot of students had with teachers back then was very collegial.”
When it came to advice for current Lakeside students, Mak and Mito were aligned in their belief that high school students should try to enjoy the experience as much as possible, even in the midst of immense pressure surrounding the college application process. “I think current Lakeside students feel a lot of pressure to succeed post high school in a way that people from my generation did not,” Mito explained. “My biggest regret from back then is that I didn’t take more time off and wasn’t like a little bit lazier. As you grow older, your opportunities to have downtime really shrink…I should’ve taken more time to really be a kid and enjoy it.” Mak echoed that sentiment and encouraged students to try to enjoy themselves as much as possible as well as open themselves to explore and build new friendships. “There’s a lot of focus on achievement, which is great, but you also need to have a sense of balance and self-care…that’s a lifelong skill to have.”
Mak mused that after being able to reconnect and converse with a number of her peers, they were unanimously grateful for their time and experience at Lakeside. “I think sometimes when we were here on campus, we were just studying and trying to get through our classes,” she shared. “But looking back on it, there’s a tremendous sense of appreciation for the teaching, the community, the alumni network, and the school’s support over the years that really sticks with a lot of us.”