For the first edition of Everyone Has A Story (EHAS), we decided to randomly select one lucky online subscriber and write a feature story on them. The lucky winner was a current junior in his second year at Heritage, Dylan Dueñas.
The first thing you notice about Dueñas is the two liter thermos he carries around daily, filled to the brim with pure black coffee. When asked about it, Dueñas stated, “It’s not an addiction, I can stop anytime. I just thoroughly enjoy the taste of black coffee. I find it calming. I also don’t like adding any sugar or cream to my coffee to dilute it, I like tasting the true flavor.”
Coffee is not the only thing Dueñas is an enthusiast for. He is a member of the math competition team, the varsity bowling team, Model UN and the robotics team. In robotics, Dylan is usually the electrical research and documentation officer, meaning he has to look into new ideas for how to improve the robots’ pneumatics, wiring, and code, while also recording diagrams and data from the robot.
Through robotics, Dueñas has found great friends and made countless memories. One of the most memorable is when, on the way home from robotics summer camp, his friend’s car broke down, causing them to sprint two miles to the nearest auto shop. While stressful at the time, it’s Dueñas’s favorite memory to look back upon and laugh at.
In his rare free time, Dueñas loves to scuba dive. He tries to go every weekend and loves to watch the wildlife and ecosystems found deep in the ocean.
Just as Dueñas refuses to dilute his coffee, he doesn’t like to be subtle with his thoughts and he is an extremely straightforward person. When asked how he’d like to be remembered, his simple response was “Like [French philosopher] Jean-Paul Sartre said, ‘Hell is other people. I don’t want to live in other people’s recollection of me, I’d rather speak for myself.’”
Dueñas’s parting advice is to not live in the past, but to focus on the present and future. “Don’t focus on accomplishments from the past, look forward at what’s to come.” Dueñas hopes to graduate from college in five years with a double major and possible minor, but he is still deciding what he’d like to study. “I love to experiment with my studies just like I like to experiment with my coffee,” Dueñas said. “I always need to have options.”
