Oak Park’s 50th annual Handel’s Messiah is coming up soon on Saturday, Dec. 20.

The choir, especially director Chris Droegemueller, is ecstatic and is hoping for the most impressive turnout ever.

This concert will be drastically different from all the rest, it’s going to be held in the main gym, instead of the Vineyard Church. It’s going to have two other vocal directors who retired from Oak Park directing along with Droegemueller, and the biggest difference is that there are going to be 500-plus alumni singing with the choir.

With all of these alumni coming back, from graduating from 1966 to 2014, it’s difficult but to not wonder what their high school experience was like and what they’re doing now. Here’s the story of just one of those 500 alumni:

Jordan Petrich graduated in 2013, and she was one of the biggest vocal music enthusiasts. From the start of high school to the end of junior year, she was set on becoming a singer/songwriter and Droegemueller encouraged her to pursue that dream. Her goal was to go to college on the East Coast. Starting her senior year, she decided that not every passion should be made into a career, so she switched from singing dreams she wanted to become an astrophysicist.

“[Science teacher] Mr. Dedrick definitely inspired that because I fell in love with physics in his class. He was just an extremely interesting man, and I had the most fascinating conversations with him about the universe and science.”

Come graduation, Petrich received several generous offers from colleges, like the University of Kansas-Lawrence, but she was persistent on moving away from the Midwest. UC Santa Barbara called out to her for being one of the top science colleges of the country, but also because she was ready to have an adventure in California. Currently she is a music DJ for the university’s radio station, KCSB, and she’s also a reporter for KCSB news. She’s also involved in several different political clubs and actually got an internship with a congressional candidate through one of them!

High school English classes prepared Jordan the most for what college is like.

She said, “when it comes to humanity majors, every class is about reading and questioning what you read. It’s about being able to put your thoughts on paper, and the person with the most original ideas who can put them into words is usually the one setting the curve.”

She also said that in college the professors are very impressed with students who actually know statistics and any other solid math-based logic, and some of the finest math teachers at Oak Park really prepared her for that as well.

Petrich is working on her major in political science and a double minor in philosophy and English. After her undergraduate is completed, she wants to move to the East Coast and go to graduate school at NYU or Georgetown, but she’s also thinking about working a couple years before going to school again.

She comes back to Kansas City late Friday, Dece. 19, and is excited to sing alongside her friends that have graduated with her and started living their own lives, but also her friends that are still going to school at Oak Park!

FOR A RELATED STORY: CLICK HERE

FOR A VIDEO OF BILL GRACE SPEAKING ABOUT THE EVENT: CLICK HERE