ArvinJay Jumalon shoots for the moon

Photo by Salma

News Editor, ArvinJay Jumalon reflects on the Berlin Wall in exhibition at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. while attending the 2019 JEA journalism convention.

   Lost in space, daydreaming about distant galaxies—not just fictional ones like George Lucas’ Star Wars galaxy, ArvinJay Jumalon (Arvin) has always been known as the animated boy with his head in the clouds. Though Arvin is many things—academic, rowdy, amiable, controversial, kind-hearted, disorganized (the list goes on)—he is undefinable and best described as the human version of a Jackson Pollock painting.

   Idolizing everyday heroes such as brainy classmates and disciplined marching band members became Arvin’s main pastime as an underclassman, but he eventually realized (in his nonchalant, slackly manner that’s typically followed with ‘I know’s and ‘Yeah’s) that outgrowing his role as a rookie began with his identity. He now admits it took two years of rejection, discouragement, and naive mistakes to begin working on himself. 

   “I can vividly remember the time I was messing around in the band room and then Mr. Tramm signaled me into his office. I was so scared that he was gonna get mad at me. He basically told me ‘This is why you didn’t get the leadership position’ and I think something snapped in me then and there, that I should take things more seriously. So shout out to Mr. Tramm because I really needed that,” Jumalon said.

  At the end of his junior year, Arvin landed his first leadership position in a class he had least expected himself to venture into, let alone enjoy. Intimidated by the prestige that his predecessors had established for the News Editor of The Silvertip, Arvin was in shambles at the start of his senior year but pushed himself to learn and grow beyond his limits. He was no longer the empty canvas he had felt like from the start of high school.

   “I looked up to Mitra and Jocelynn. I respect them a lot. I feel like I’m a patchwork of different people: they’re sort of a piece of me and they took a piece of me. I stood on the shoulders of giants,” Jumalon said. 

   Arvin’s next adventure will be tackling CSU Long Beach as an aspiring aerospace engineer, to fulfill his lifelong goal of building rockets. He hopes to continue building on some of his current interests like robotics and learning Spanish fluently while also exploring some uncharted territory: rock climbing, being a gym rat, and considering a career in education down the road.