Student China-bound after landing straight A’s for life
Being a lifelong straight-A student has never given Destin’s Hunter Woodham the feeling he could afford to coast, Woodham says.
“Once I graduated (Destin) elementary school, I thought I should try to keep with this,” Woodham, 22, told The Log. “Then every graduation, every year, I thought, ‘Now I’ve got to keep going’ ... I was always worried, always in my mind trying to get all A’s.”
And he did — all through Destin Middle School, Fort Walton Beach High School and then the University of Florida, from which he graduated in December with a degree in East Asian Languages and Literatures. There, he was recognized as an “outstanding four-year scholar” for his unbroken string of A’s.
Woodham is the son of charter boat Capt. Mike Woodham of the Merrikohl.
“This young man has gone through every grade every year and never once in his entire life made a B. I think that’s extraordinary — it’s mind-boggling to me,” said his father.
Hunter said his family never pressured him as much as he pressured himself: “As long as I did my best, that’s all that mattered.”
Next month, Woodham, who learned Mandarin Chinese at UF, heads off to China to study at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Eventually, he said, he’d like to work as a United Nations translator.
“I’ve always been very interested in Chinese,” Woodham said. “I figured college would be a perfect opportunity to explore that and give it a try. With the importance China has right now, I thought it would be a really great language to learn.”