Camden Central School District -

As her time at Camden High School winds down, you could make the case that senior Hannah Cere has saved the best part of the docket for last. She was announced as the ninth-ranked graduate in the Class of 2025, and recently received a life-changing college admission offer that many could only dream of getting.

“It was funny because it was the last school I heard back from,” Cere said. “I had some good schools lined up already (Amherst College and Hobart and William Smith Colleges), so I was telling myself ‘whatever happens, happens.”

While both of those are strong options, it took only one click to re-evaluate that course toward something bigger. That click opened an email. Digital confetti fluttered across the screen, and the news was crystal clear after a suspenseful wait: Hannah was admitted to Cornell University. To absorb that decision’s magnitude understandably took some time.

“At first, you don’t fully absorb it until maybe like a month later, and then it feels real,” she said. “I’m starting to get the influx of emails now.

If she has anything to say about it, she might be making lots of cases of her own for years to come with a career in law. Hannah has aspirations of becoming an attorney or pursuing forensic psychology. She’ll start her studies this fall on an Ivy League campus known for turning out top professionals in the field, and the opportunities it presents are exciting.

“The campus is beautiful for one thing,” she said. “It’s just stunning with this old Ivy League feel and it’s awesome. I didn’t think I would necessarily want a bigger school until I toured Amherst and got across campus in about 15 minutes. Cornell has more opportunity with more people, more students, and more funding, so it just opens up a lot more doors. I think it’s going to get me where I want to go.”

Where she wants to go is a fairly wide path at the moment. She named criminal law, along with intellectual property law and medical malpractice law as areas of interest. 

This journey tends to start with a spark of interest. And for Hannah, the often-mysterious enigmas and wide-ranging challenges of American law were huge selling points in her pursuit.

“It started off as a general interest because it’s something we all have to follow,” she said. “But it’s also so mysterious. Not everyone really knows what the law is, and that’s cool. I like the interplay between it being something very strict and set in stone as written, versus when it gets interpreted and bended, and molded situation-by-situation. I want a job that is going to have a lot of variety and change day-by-day.”

To prepare, Hannah has spent the school year enrolled in the New Visions Law, Government, and Public Administration program at Madison-Oneida BOCES. This unique senior-level program provides an immersive study environment at the Madison County Government offices in Wampsville. Students take classes in four disciplines, and pursue embedded internship opportunities within the Madison County Government, where they can see day-to-day operations in their chosen fields. 

For her internships, she worked in the Madison County Courts and in the County Attorney’s Office. In the Courts, she worked directly with Hon. Rhonda Youngs, and Court Attorney Gemma Rossi. Within the Attorney’s office, she worked under the supervision of County Attorney Tina Wayland-Smith, and Assistant County Attorneys Jeffrey Aumell and Melissa Martell Felton. Most of her internship supervisors in top positions were women, which Hannah found inspiring. 

“Judge Youngs is the first female judge for Madison County, and Attorney Wayland-Smith is the first female county attorney, so it was really nice to be in that environment,” she said. 

Her work will forever be enshrined as a matter of court record, too.

“In my last day with the County Attorney, they let me sit at the Counsel tables as a case was happening,” she said. “I was part of the record because they had me introduce myself, so now i’m in legal records. It’s nice that they trusted me enough to do that.”

Beyond the proceedings, Cere also learned about some misconceptions that can be held about the court system. For starters, many cases never actually reach trial and are settled in arbitration. She also saw the human side of the court system firsthand. While attorneys can be adversaries in the chambers, she was surprised to learn that there were many positive professional relationships among the legal community after the gavel dropped. That put some of her own concerns about the field at ease.

“A lot of people think of this as like Legally Blonde, where it’s all very competitive,” she said. “But they’re real people too. They can talk to each other normally and be friendly with each other. And I really like that. It made me feel a lot less nervous about it.”

In many ways, that dynamic mirrors the relationships she’s built with many of her classmates, who come from school districts across the MOBOCES region. A selection process maintains small class sizes and a family atmosphere, and that sense of community helps build trust among a group that is together for hours a day. It also helps build the vital communication skills needed for class debates that will be foundational in college and beyond.

“My class was really friendly and we all grew so close together,” she said. “It’s such a small class size where it’s very easy to make connections with people. I definitely prefer that.”

She also enjoyed the independent nature of the academic coursework, which was a bit different from a typical high school environment.

As Hannah gets set for the next journey on life’s docket, she is certainly quick to point out that opportunities in music were essential in helping her find her own voice, one that will certainly be needed in a law office or courthouse. She just recently played her last show at CHS as a member of the Camden High School Concert Band, and named teachers Rick Rudka, Michaele Morehouse, and Matthew Donaleski as some of her most treasured influences.

“Music means so much to me and it’s shaped me,” Cere said. “You get so much confidence when you play it right. And it’s a form of communication too. When you’re on stage or when you’re in front of a panel, you can almost let go. You know you’re prepared. You know you’re going to sound good. When you can get used to communicating yourself without words, it makes it easier to do it with words because you have that self assurance.”

As she prepares to head off to one of the world’s most prominent universities, Cere is mindful of the opportunities she’s had here at home and the people she’s met. And she hopes she’s remembered for who she is long after her chapter as a Blue Devil is closed.

“I do want to hold on to Camden because it’s shaped me a lot, especially the people here,” she said. “Even though we’re a small school, I'm surprised at the opportunities we have and I'm happy about that. I would really like to be remembered more for my character than anything. It’s one thing to have a plaque you see about someone and it says they did this or that. But if my teachers remember me, that’s really sweet, and I hope they can.”