David Pandich is a member of Flagler Palm Coast High School’s graduating class of 2005. His experiences at FPC were a foundation for his future as an artist and art teacher in Flagler County. Beginning with the summer leading into his freshman year, David had the opportunity to participate in a summer acting class which involved the production of a main-stage play. It was here that he had his first experiences with Mary Beale, Jack Neiberline, Alana Fitzgerald and many of the students with whom he worked throughout his high school career. During the following years, David took part in several main-stage productions, acting classes, the formality singers, the Thespian Society, jazz band, and even the school’s flagship barbershop quartet. Needless to say, the myriad of opportunities available for performances far outreached a typical high school experience; especially when coupled with the rigorous honors and AP courses offered at the school.

With this performance experience in tow, David won the Priscilla Parker Scholarship for theater at Rollins College, and went on to perform at the Annie Russell Theater in Winter Park, Florida. At Rollins, David met Dr. Robert Moore during a linguistic anthropology class, and was offered the opportunity to travel to China for field research to co-author a paper discussing modern Mandarin slang. This article, “Language with attitude: American slang and Chinese liyu” is currently published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, was the impetus for David to major in Anthropology, emphasizing linguistics and Chinese language.

Now, David has settled down in Palm Coast with his wife, Mandi, and is currently in his second year of teaching acting at Matanzas High School. Looking back, it is clear that the only reason such a tangential path through life was possible came from the curriculum and opportunities at FPC. Without such a variety of rigorous academia and creative outlets, a life where trying and, ideally, mastering everything would simply be unreasonable. For the FPC graduate, an imaginative and fulfilling future is within reach.