
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 8, 1995                   TAG: 9506090017
SECTION: NEIGHBORS                    PAGE: S-27   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: AIMEE RATLIFF SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SWEDISH STUDENT AMONG GRADS

Sofia Granstrom, 17, started her senior year of high school at Yale University last August at a camp for European exchange students. Two weeks later she was living with Timothy and Tina Underwood in Eagle Rock so she could attend James River High School.

During the course of the school year, Granstrom, who is from Pitea, a small town in north Sweden, has been one of the few women on James River's coed soccer team. She also ran track and sang with the school's chorus.

She'll be among the 83 graduates who get their diplomas Friday but it won't be the end of her high school career.

``It's taken lots of letters and phone calls to make sure Sofia's classes in Sweden complete the curriculum we have here, but she will graduate with a diploma from an American high school,'' said Bridget Marshall, a guidance counselor at James River High School.

Granstrom, however, will still have two more years of high school when she returns home because her year of academics in the United States will not transfer to the program she is enrolled in at her home high school.

``I want to study to be a lawyer when I'm done with high school because my father is a lawyer. College is free in Sweden but you have to have straight A's to get in. It's really a privilege,'' she said.

Her American classmates also have made decisions about their futures. Eleven are planning to go to a four-year college or university, 19 to community college, six into a branch of the military and 17 already have jobs or plan to work.

A few students have already received scholarships. Randy Brown has accepted a three-year scholarship for the ROTC at Virginia Military Institute. Cassandra Luckie has received $3,000 to attend Virginia Intermont College and Tatianna Harlow has received $2,000 at James Madison University.

Granstrom said high school in America "is very different because there is so much school spirit and socializing. You don't really go on dates in Sweden. This has been the greatest year. Everyone has wanted to get to know me and help me. Even the teachers have been interested in me. The most difficult thing has been the language difference.''

``Music is my favorite thing to do. I was even chosen to perform in the mixed choir at the regional chorus at Bassett High School,'' said Granstrom, who will return to Sweden in late June after she goes to Myrtle Beach for senior week and Washington D.C. She hopes to return to the United States one day to live.

Marshall said Granstrom "has really been a wonderful asset to the school this year. A new student around here is a celebration. The students just open their arms. That is one of the significant things about the smaller size of this school."

The senior class, as a whole, though is "a very close-knit group," Marshall said. "Part of this can probably be attributed to the death of a fellow classmate, Sue Ann Watts, in a car accident in May of 1993. Something of this nature has not happened that often in this school."

by CNB