Class of 2025 Senior Spotlight: Carl Taraporevala, Marquette High

The Show Choir room at Marquette High has had a particular effect on Carl Taraporevala ever since he first stepped foot into it as a freshman.

“We had it first hour and, every morning, I was so excited,” he said of choir director Jason Winter’s class. “Still today, every time I have that class, I smile because it’s so much fun to be there.”

As an underclassman, Taraporevala’s older sister helped introduce him to the school and her friends. Soon, he started making his own network of friends and today, the senior strives to inhabit the same role for anyone he meets at Marquette.

“It’s really helped me to learn how to become a better person because there were a lot of mentors for me in my grade and upperclassmen,” he said. “Everybody has a personality. I look at it and try to find the positives and include it in myself. Being a nice person is something I strive to be. I try to be my best, not just for me but for others as well.”

Taraporevala has been a Rockwood School District student since preschool, going from Rockwood Early Childhood-Clarkson Valley to the Ballwin preschool room before attending Ballwin Elementary, Selvidge Middle and Marquette.

At Marquette, some of his favorite memories revolve around the activities in which he has participated: Show Choir, the Marquette Theatre Company, orchestra, Tri-M Music Honor Society, RSD Lives literary magazine and the Stang Gang student cheering section.

He has also benefited from opportunities to deepen his curricular interests in classes such as AP Psychology with teacher Ashley Hobbs.

“I have a lot of friends in class and we have a lot of discussions, as it’s a discussion-based class,” Taraporevala said. “It makes learning way more fun, especially since I like the curriculum of psychology, I like the people and it’s easy to talk to them and become better.”

After graduating in May, he hopes to put those personality traits to use in a college context. He plans to study business – with possible minors in political science or psychology – at the University of Missouri in Columbia or Indiana University in Bloomington: big schools in thriving college towns with plenty of extracurricular options.

Kind of like he has enjoyed at Marquette.

“The feeling of being around people makes me happier and makes a lot of my work feel easier,” he said. “Rockwood has prepared me because there are a lot of different activities that are offered within the schools. Marquette, especially, there is a lot of community involvement, so there is a lot of collaboration between clubs. That really is something that helped me because I was able to meet a lot of different people and have a lot of fun while making improvements to our school.”