Here is a recent interview with Ryan Sartor, SMS Class of 2000. Ryan has been a great friend to St. Mary School and we are grateful for his guidance in all things social media.
Where do you currently live?
I am a Milford resident.
What is your current job/year in school?
I started my new position as Milford Patch editor in April 2012. I started as a Local Voices blogger in November 2011 and later became a freelance writer for the Patch before becoming editor.
What was your educational path after graduating from St. Mary School?
After graduating from Saint Mary’s School in 2000, I attended Notre Dame High School in West Haven for one year, and then decided to transfer to Foran High School. While Foran certainly had its rewards as a school, I must note that the teachers at Notre Dame were great and I received an excellent education there as well.
One benefit of attending Foran was that I was able to enroll in Educational Center of the Arts in New Haven in afternoons, where I studied Creative Writing. After high school, I attended C.W. Post, Long Island University where I received a B.F.A. in Film. I also received the Career Student of the Year Award in 2008 for my work interning with MTV, NBC, “The Colbert Report” and Focus Features. Internships are a great tool for learning what you want to do in your field of study. I graduated from Goddard College in Plainfield, VT with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing in January 2012.
How do you feel SMS prepared you academically?
Saint Mary School was an amazing place to learn. The small classes and individual attention from teachers made it so that I was very prepared for high school, and the high expectations of us as students taught me how to study on my own and hold myself to a higher standard than ‘Just Getting By.’
Do you feel SMS provided you with a foundation for your future?
SMS taught me that a school is more than a group of classrooms under the same room. It was always the example of how schools should be and taught me such invaluable skills as kindness, goodwill and decency toward others. Teachers such as Mr. Montanaro, Mrs. Benedesso, Mrs. Birge, Mrs. Nelson, Mrs. Eisenhandler, Mrs. Bartolome and others made a fantastic impression on me and set great examples for what a leader should be. I also think that Saint Mary’s has some of the best arts and physical education teachers around. Mrs. Pendleton did a fantastic job teaching those areas.
What are some of your favorite memories of SMS?
My favorite memory was the eighth grade class trip to Boston. It was a great way to celebrate our impending graduation and we were all looking forward to the possibilities beyond St. Mary’s, while recognizing even then that we would miss our time at the school quite a bit.
