Pali Senior Wins Optimist Contest

By SARAH STOCKMAN Palisadian-Post Intern Palisades Charter High School senior Caroline Coster won the annual Pacific Palisades Optimist Club essay contest in April with her entry ‘The Power of Youth.’ Coster received a medal, a certificate and a cash award. Her essay was also forwarded to the district level, where she will be competing for scholarships and a chance to advance to the national contest.   Coster’s essay focuses on the responsibility of Generation Y to use new technologies that could stop global warming, clean the oceans and help feed the hungry.   ’Today’s youth play such an important role in our culture, exerting social and economic power in the U.S. and all over the world, it seems natural that they should use that power to positively shape its future,’ Coster writes. ‘President Obama understood this during his campaign when he captivated young voters with a vision that they universally desire through their own technologies.’   Coster, a Santa Monica resident, feels that the Y generation, which has grown up with modern technologies, has an advantage over those of other generations.   ’Despite the fact that the young may not be mature, their collective voice is quite powerful,’ Coster said in an interview. ‘They are idealistic and passionate.’   When she was in elementary school, Coster kept a journal. ‘I basically wrote about everything I saw with completely vivid detail,’ she said. She is now a chief editor of the Tideline, PaliHi’s award-winning student newspaper, administered by teacher Mary Cappelli.   Throughout high school, Coster has followed a few simple writing rules. ‘Always turn things in on time and instead of trying to make things sound perfect and trying to write in a professional voice, just tell it how it is. Deal with the flow later. It is easy for the point of the story to get lost in the writing.’   Her father, Geoff Coster, who is on the speaker’s bureau of the Optimist Club told her about the annual contest, which is open to students under 19, and requires them to write betweem 400 to 500 words on a given topic.   In addition to schoolwork and the Tideline, Coster is also a competitive rower for the Marina Aquatic Center Rowing Club, and practices Monday through Friday from 4 to 6:30 p.m.   On Saturdays, when she isn’t at rowing competitions, she works as a public educator for Heal the Bay’s Aquarium under the Santa Monica pier. ‘I teach people about ocean pollution and about the animals in the Bay,’ Coster said.   This fall, Coster will attend Hobart and William Smith College in upstate New York with plans to study environmental conservation. After graduation, she might join the Peace Corps, but ultimately plans to attend graduate school and become a professor.   Coster, whose mother is Barbara Chiavelli, has a younger sister, Gabby, who will attend Santa Monica High School next year.