Feature: The Class of 2020 Was Robbed: Valedictorian Ulrika Brameus Talks About the Struggles of School During a Pandemic and What it Takes to Stay #1 in Running and High School

The class of 2020 was robbed. There’s no other way to say it. Life milestones where momentous memories were supposed to be made such as senior prom and graduation were stripped away. We’d like to take this time to congratulate all the recent graduates who feel as if they haven’t been properly recognized.

We’ll let Ulrika, one of our employees at Fleet Feet Lincoln Square, speak for herself. Ulrika graduated as the valedictorian of Amundsen High School while simultaneously working part time. We talked to her about how she’s currently feeling about her senior year as she knew it and the similarities between the structure needed to become a valedictorian and the discipline needed to successfully adhere to a running training plan.

Oh, and we bought her a graduation gift, too. A Head to toe outfit from rabbit.

Please join us in congratulating Ulrika as she heads to Boston University in the fall and the entire class of 2020. You did it.

Ulrika is wearing the rabbit Hopper Short in Black with Hoka One One Clifton 6 shoes.

First off, congratulations. Being the valedictorian at Amundsen High School. Between finishing high school, deciding on a college, and living during an international pandemic, how do you feel right now? 

I’m excited but of course I'm thinking about how lucky I am. No one I know has been impacted by the coronavirus. The only impact that there has been is that my mom hasn’t been able to go to work and I haven’t been able to come into work but other than that everyone is healthy and I’m thankful for that. I was really devastated when I found out I couldn’t spend time with my friends for the last couple weeks because that’s supposed to be our last time to make memories in high school. 

We’re truly living in unprecedented times. What does graduation look like for you?

We’re doing it virtually. It’s still going to be the same time and date. We’re all calling in at six. They’re using a program called MarchingOrder. They’ve done several virtual graduations before. We have to send in a picture and a little quote and I have to send in my speech and I think they’re just going to flash that on the screen on alphabetical order. Or, maybe, it will be like an actual Zoom call. I don’t really know how it’s going to look.

Ulrika is wearing the rabbit Racy Tank in Limelight and the rabbit Hopper Short in Black with Hoka One One Clifton 6 shoes.

What’s the prompt of your valedictorian speech?

The future. I’m really digging into how we’re overcoming this big obstacle right now. How we overcame not having three weeks of school at the beginning of the year with the teacher’s strike and how the class of 2020 has overcome all of these hurdles and how we’re so much stronger in the future and how we can overcome anything in the future.

During your senior year you kind of work up this anticipation and you see the light at the end of the tunnel, with the year culminating at senior prom, graduation, and senior week, do you feel like you were robbed from some of these momentous experiences?

I was really looking forward to senior night and senior prom and have those pictures with friends and going out to dinner and of course graduation. My whole family was going to come from Europe to come see me walk across the stage and give my speech so I feel like it’s not just me who was robbed but my family, especially my grandma, she doesn’t think she’s going to be able to see my sister graduate in two years. I was going to be the first grandchild she was going to get to see graduate so I think I was robbed from that especially.

Ulrika is wearing the rabbit EZ Tee Long Sleeve in Grey with a Garmin watch and BOCO Fleet Feet exclusive running mask (not available for purchase).

Let’s not forget that graduation parties usually include receiving a lot of cash that can help ease the financial burden of living on your own for the first time. Do you feel like you’re missing out on that?

Yea! What some people have been doing because since we haven’t been able to celebrate the seniors is this Adopt A Senior Facebook Group, so basically your parent posts this little intro about you and someone “adopts” you. I guess someone adopted me sent me a lululemon gift card, which was super cool.

That’s weird.

Yea! It is weird! Strangers just celebrating you. It’s parents who are mostly involved so I guess it’s not that weird but I was a little skeptical when my mom told me she was going to make a post about me I was like “I’m not sure if I want people to know where I live.” My counselor knows where I live now because she had to drop off my cap and gown.

It’s been weird. I’ve been seeing my teachers in a regular day setting and I think that’s weird. Like I saw my math teacher from last year at Target just wearing sweats and a t-shirt never seen him like that. I just saw my principal drive by while I was walking here. You’re looking into your teachers homes on the virtual calls so I feel like every week they have a different setting so I’ve seen my english teacher’s living room, I’ve seen her kitchen, I’ve seen her patio I’m like “well, now I kind of know what your house looks like now.”

That’s interesting. Do you think that these experience makes class and your relationship with your teacher more personal? Or is there a benefit to these experiences in a way that humanizes them?

Yea! In a way I feel like these calls aren’t in a classroom setting so we’ve been able to have more personal conversations. With my spanish teacher for example, when she has her online class every week it’s not really about how the classwork is going it’s more like “how are you doing?” and checking in on us.

Did you have to do any virtual schooling during those final weeks? If so, what were the struggles?

Chicago Public Schools started off with optional work and then moved to mandatory work. During the optional work, it was fine. I felt like I had motivation to do more of the fun assignments and get my grade up but there wasn’t a huge pressure if you didn’t do all of the work. And recently moving closer to graduation and knowing my grade is at risk now I feel like my motivation is actually a little bit lower. It’s just hard getting through these final weeks and not having the in person support that you normally have from your teachers and not being able to ask them questions directly like you have to send them an email or send them a Google Hangout message and that’s really strange not being able to ask questions directly.

What about students who don’t have access to WiFi or laptops?

CPS has allocated so much money recently to making sure that everyone has WiFi at home and everyone has technology to access their schoolwork. I know XFinity has been giving free WiFi to CPS students and CPS has done technology pickups if you don’t have technology at home you fill out a Google Form and you go pick it up at the school if you don’t have access to those tools. I know at our school they did Chromebooks so everyone has a laptop at home.

Talk to me about your running career. Did you run in high school? 

I ran my freshman, sophomore, and half of my junior year. Junior year I discovered I had a stress fracture in my tibia so I had to take some time off from running. But throughout most of my childhood I did triathlons. I’ve always done swimming and then I ran track, now that I haven’t been able to run I’ve been playing water polo.

When did you realize being class valedictorian was possible? Did you start your high school career with that as a goal?

When I started high school I had no idea where any of this would take me. I always tried to do things that I thought would be beneficial to me in the future so I took double math classes my freshman year, I took double science classes my sophomore year so I was always a little ambitious in that sense but I never really knew where I stood in class rankings. When I got my first progress report at Amundsen and I saw that number one on the paper and ever since that’s been my motivator. There’s been a couple times when I slipped to two, three, or four because we were all kind of close but that just motivated me to get my grade up and keep that number one spot and when I got my email telling me I need to write my speech I was so happy. All that hard work paid off. Those double math classes and double science classes paid off.

When you’re in first place in a cross country or track meet, some would say that it’s more difficult to find motivation to maintain first place than it is for someone who is in second or third place to find motivation to come from behind and catch that person in first place. Did you experience that at all when it came to your class rank?

I think being in first, like running, it’s about pacing yourself. You don’t want to burn out freshman or sophomore year. I’ve seen so many people do that and they drop out of honors or AP classes their junior year just because they can’t motivate themselves anymore. I know how hard the salutatorian worked so I think seeing how close he was behind me motivated me to work harder and harder. We were in the exact same classes. I was trying to just nudge him out every single time. I think it’s very much the same with running. When I look back at winning charter school state in Texas, it was the same thing. I started out neck and neck with number two and three and when I was a mile away I just kind of floored it and looked back and saw how close they were and it motivated me to push even harder.

How did you keep yourself accountable and maintain structure? Can you compare that routine to running or training?

It was hard at times. I was working at Fleet Feet 10-15 hours a week during the school year and I was also at practice everyday after school for two hours. It was really hard but I think having a lot of things to do actually helped me. I hate not having things to do or work towards. With the swim season for example it was always about dropping time. With work it was getting my sales numbers up. With school it was getting my grades up. I think having something to work towards and always being busy and having that structure helped me. It’s a lot like a training program. Like when I was training for a triathlon, it was all the time. I was working towards a goal and these are the steps I need to take.

Ulrika is wearing the rabbit Racy Tank in Limelight and the rabbit Hopper Short in Black with Hoka One One Clifton 6 shoes.

What were the struggles of balancing school, a job, sports, and also enjoying free time? Especially since Fleet Feet isn’t the easiest job. You need to be educated on the latest technology of shoes and apparel and other gear. How did you make room for that mentally?

It was hard for a while. When I was keyholder, I had to be the last person here. Sometimes I wouldn’t get home until 9:30 and I would still have to make dinner, I would still have to do homework because I came straight from practice. There were times that I really felt discouraged but I love the people I work with. I love my team. Surrounding myself with really positive people really was a big motivator.

The people here really are positive people. They just share this love for running and want to pass that love and passion on to the customer. It’s been difficult during quarantine. I’d rather be in the office than working from home. I miss that camaraderie. 

Definitely. And even the people here, they’ve helped me with my schoolwork. We have this guy Skylar who worked in the admissions office at Northwestern University who helped me with my college application process. And Annie actually went to Boston University and gave me the inside scoop about the school and we have Walter who is this math wiz and he would help me with calculus and I think that also helped with keeping the motivation and wanting to come back to work.

What will you be studying at Boston University? 

Political science. And probably economics just for some job stability. My ultimate goal is to work with charities and non-profits and maybe a non-governmental organization like the United Nations. The past two years I’ve been in a global politics class and those units were definitely my favorite.

Read Ulrika's valedictorian speech below:

"Good evening parents, friends, teachers, mentors, administrators, honored guests, and of course, the Graduating class of 2020. To whom I want to say, today we become graduates of Amundsen High School. The home of the Vikings is now also the home of tomorrow’s doctors, lawyers, teachers, musicians, engineers, and nurses, who I am certain will be vital in fighting and conquering any challenges the world throws at us.

No matter the journey you had to take to reach this day, the challenges you had to overcome, or the late nights you stayed up to finish your homework, what is important now is that we are all here tonight to celebrate our triumphs, our achievements, our victories. We stand here today, or I guess in this case sit here in front of our computer screens, to honor us and our accomplishments over the past 4 years.

Graduation marks the end of yet another extraordinary chapter in our lives. It feels as if just the other week, graduation was a whole array of essays, books, and math problems, away. But here we are on the precipice of the future. It's not a distant reality anymore like it was when we were struggling to understand Shakespeare or figuring out what an integral was. But our future, it’s here. It begins today. With this chapter closed, I am certain that many of us are already anxious about starting the next one because, unlike an English book, we cannot skip through the pages of life to see how long the next chapter is going to be. We all have our own book of life that has not yet been written and every day that passes is another page we write in ourselves. Luckily, as Amundsen graduates, we have been provided with all of the paper and ink we need to write our own stories. And for that, we thank the wonderful staff that keeps this school running every day.

No matter what our future chapters will hold, there will be times in our lives where self-doubt will stand in the way of an open door. When this happens, let us all remember the following:

Physicist, Albert Einstein, now considered one of the most brilliant men to ever have lived, did not speak until age 4, and was originally told he would never amount to anything.

Oprah Winfrey struggled as a small-town journalist before becoming the big shot media executive she is known as today, and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter was rejected by 12 publishers before it became one of the best selling books of our time. Never let anyone tell you that you can’t.

As I close out my speech, I want to leave you with one final thought. All of you hold the power in your hands to create the future you want. My challenge to each of you, and to myself, is to do all that you can do to reach your full potential. If each of you, the class of 2020, can do that, just imagine the effect we would have. The future is truly in our hands, so let's make the most of it. Use the journey ahead of you to fulfill your purpose and potential. Turn your can'ts into cans and dreams into plans.

Thank you and congratulations class of 2020, we did it."