Lohman ready to take next step

One of the few Iola graduates venturing outside the usual orbit of Kansas colleges, Jo Lohman will attend Drake University, in Des Moines, this fall.
“It will be a nice change in scenery, getting out of Kansas,” says Lohman.
Lohman, who will graduate on Sunday as one of this year’s valedictorians, is a magnet for honors. The senior recently earned the Educational Excellence Award, Drake’s Presidential Scholarship, and has been named a 2015 State Scholar, to pick from a long list of accolades.
Lohman is a good athlete — track, basketball, cross country — and a good bells player in the high school band. But she is self-mocking when discussing her contributions to these extracurricular pursuits. “I’m average,” Lohman says of her status as a track athlete. “Not out front and not in the back.”
But Lohman leans forward and speaks passionately when engaged in a topic that recruits what is obviously the A-student’s chief gift: her intelligence. It may not add anything to describe a class valedictorian as smart, but Lohman is unusually thoughtful when discussing what it will mean for her to live in an environment that values the life of the mind.
“Around here, there aren’t always enough people who care about school and their grades. When I get up there, and definitely when I start my major,” — no slouch, Lohman has picked chemistry — “I’ll be with people who like the same things as me, which will be nice.”
 Lohman describes herself as “more excited than nervous” regarding her big move.
But it won’t be an adventure she hasn’t rehearsed in miniature already. Last year Lohman studied abroad in England for four months. She lived with a family friend in a London suburb. She attended classes at the local school. And, by the end of her stay, she was making sightseeing trips by bus or train to the busy capital on her own.
Lohman plans to continue to travel while in college. Of course the horizon-widening benefits of international travel, she explains, aren’t always exclusively intellectual. “My mom’s college roommate used to live here, in America. But then she moved to England and got married to somebody she met while she was studying abroad. So,” jokes Lohman, “maybe that will happen to me. Who knows?”
Lohman’s real, long-term goal, however, is to become a doctor. In the meantime, she has developed a plan to distinguish herself from the majority of her future professional peers. “I really want to go to a Spanish speaking country and learn Spanish. I want to be fluent. It’s one of my college goals. In America, there are a lot of Spanish-speaking people here. If I’m going to become a doctor, it would come in handy to be able to speak to them. I feel like it’s a language that would be useful here. Rather than, like, say French, where there aren’t that many French-speaking people here. There’s Ms. (Virginia) Crane, I guess.”
Lohman has high praise for the Class of 2015. And savors, as a favorite memory, her sophomore year when they obliterated the class ahead of them in the Spring Fling, an end-of-year sporting contest between the classes. “I don’t know if I should actually say this,” admits a tentative but hugely grinning Lohman, “but we really loved beating them. We beat our soon-to-be seniors. It was a triumph. We were kind of like top dogs.”
Lohman will spend the summer as a lifeguard at the Iola Municipal Pool. She’ll hang out with her friends. Travel some with her family. And then decamp to Des Moines in August.
Lohman says her parents, Nich and Becky — both Drake Bulldogs before her — are excited about her success. “But they were kind of the same as I am in high school. They were smart kids and they never got a bad grade. So I think it’s kind of like ‘good for you — we expected this.’ … Also, I studied abroad for those four months, so that kind of prepped them. I think they’ll miss me. Hopefully. But they’ll be OK,” she says, flashing a smile, “they have four more kids.”
“I’ll definitely miss my friends and my family and some of my teachers. But I’m kind of excited to get out. I feel like when I went away to England I was like ‘Oh, this is so much better.’ I guess I’m just excited for that ‘Oh, this is so much better’ moment again.”