Matthew Zinger, who just graduated from Lasalle Secondary School, is a very committed student. Like, very committed.
The 18-year-old says he didn’t miss a single day throughout his entire time in high school. This is despite three of his four years in high school being disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking to Sudbury.com this week on the first day of summer vacation 2022, Zinger said it all started in Grade 9, when he was determined to meet minimum attendance requirements that would allow him to skip his final exams.
“So I always made sure to show up every day, and then it just kind of continued from there,” said Zinger, who added that he’s never been late to class either (there was that one time in Grade 9 when he overslept and came close, but he ended up making it to school in time).
He said he just doesn’t like missing school because he doesn’t like having to catch up later. “So I just always wanted to be there,” Zinger said.
After a certain point during high school, realizing he’d avoided missing school this long, Zinger figured he’d try to make it to the end without any absences.
But, of course, there’s the elephant in the room — how did Zinger manage to go so long without getting sick, especially with a pandemic happening for most of his years in high school?
Zinger said he’s avoided COVID-19 infection so far, wearing a mask “for the longest time,” and in terms of colds and other minor ailments, “I luckily only got sick during weekends, if that makes sense. I would get a cold on the weekend and it’d be gone.”
He realizes that all it would have taken was a bit of bad luck, and his perfect attendance streak would be over.
Of course, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, part of the time he was attending class, it was online, with either his high school or all schools in the city or province being shut down.
Even when not many of his classmates were logging on to their Zoom classes, Zinger always made sure he was there.
Next fall, Zinger heads to Laurentian University to study mechanical engineering. He said he plans to keep up his perfect attendance record, if at all possible.
“Yeah, I'm not gonna be missing classes,” he said. “It’s just kind of a thing I do now … It's just second nature to me now. And it's like, ‘Oh, I need to go to school. I need to go to class and be on time.’”
The principal of Lasalle Secondary School, Maureen McNamara, said she can only remember one other student with a perfect high school attendance record in her 11 years as a school administrator.
McNamara has glowing words about Zinger. A high achiever, he finished this semester with a 98 per cent average.
Not only is Zinger committed to academic success, McNamara said he’s just generally a wonderful young man.
“He's driven to succeed, except he does so effortlessly,” she said.
“He's got such a wonderful way about him. Like he just gets along with everybody. He's so courteous and polite. You know how some students that are high achievers can sometimes get really intense about things. Matthew just goes by it so naturally, and effortlessly.”
He said the fact that Zinger pulled off a perfect attendance record amid “everything that we've gone through as a society and as a school is even more incredible.”
Heidi Ulrichsen is the associate content editor at Sudbury.com. She also covers education and the arts scene.
