There are a lot of disappointments associated with being in the Class of 2020, what with missing out on most of the fun things traditionally enjoyed by graduating seniors, but Charlestown’s Jolie Doherty – who graduated from Boston Latin School last weekend – said she has just made the best of it and focused on the fall.
Boston Latin School last weekend
during a first-ever Drive-in
graduation. She said she will
miss the Charlestown community
feel as she leaves to study at
George Washington University in
Washington, D.C.
“I’m to the point where it’s an ‘it is what it is’ kind of thing,” she said. “You can’t do much about it. It’s probably losing our senior year of lacrosse season that was the hardest to accept. However, you also spend six years at such a rigorous school like Boston Latin and the spring of your senior year is supposed to be the most fun time you have. We didn’t get any of that.”
Next fall, it looks like the green light has been given to her chosen school, George Washington University in Washington, D.C., to open campus. However, her home in Charlestown is not something she leaves without reservation.
“I think the community in Charlestown is so unmatched compared to anywhere else,” she said in an interview this Monday. “I don’t know if I’ll get that in any other place and I won’t get that in D.C. That is one reason I want to come back after school. I already volunteer in the summers at the Charlestown Community Center for swimming and at the summer camp too. I hope I can come back in the summers for that as well.”
She said she plans to study Business Administration in the School of Business at George Washington, getting on an early track within that program.
Doherty has spent her entire life in Charlestown and attended the Warren Prescott School from kindergarten to 6th grade. After passing the exam school test, she started at Boston Latin School (BLS) in the 7th grade and continued through to graduation.
“I think BLS was hard in that sometimes it was very demanding and you could not see the end of it,” she said. “Overall, it was a wonderful experience. The education you get there is so special and something I couldn’t have gotten at a private school or any other public school…I loved the Warren Prescott too. It was fun to go to school with kids that lived in our Town and so close to each other. At Boston Latin, it’s kids from every neighborhood, but growing up it was nice to know that most of the kids lived right next to me.”
At Boston Latin, Doherty excelled as an athlete on the Swim Team and the Lacrosse Team – being a captain in both sports. Doherty said she was most excited about Lacrosse, having started the sport when she was only a first-grader at the Charlestown Lacrosse and Learning Center. She continued there until 7th grade when the demands of the Varsity BLS squad took over her practice and playing time.
The program at BLS had actually really matured while Doherty played on the team, going to the State Playoffs for three years in a row. This year, had they been able to play, Doherty said they would have likely done really well in League Play and in State Tourney play.
Doherty said she chose George Washington because she has a relative that attended and graduated from there – and is still in that area. Having visited her relative at the campus many times, she grew comfortable with it. She wanted to go to a school in a major city, and also was drawn to business after enjoying her AP Statistics class at BLS. With a good business school there, George Washington was a great fit – even if it meant leaving Charlestown for a bit.
“There are a lot of things in doubt for colleges, but we just got word that we’re going to campus in August and doing a two-week extended move in,” she said.
Jolie is the daughter of Joe and Kathy Doherty, and has two siblings – Meaghan and Nolan Doherty.