Josie Baur discovered that if the typical activities of your senior year of high school are going to be canceled because of a global pandemic, it makes some of the normal struggles easier to have your college plans sorted out as a junior. In Baur’s case, the student at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Olney, Maryland, had accepted an appointment to the United States Naval Academy, with a commitment to play lacrosse before her senior year even started.

The resident of College Park, Maryland, said she took her time choosing which high school to attend four years ago, but in the end picked Good Counsel because “it felt like home.” The many opportunities to do community service, its International Baccalaureate program and the chance to play both lacrosse and the tuba in several different bands appealed to her, she said. She also has been involved in the National Honor Society, the Black Student Association and the Xaverian Brothers service program.

She said her decision to apply to the Naval Academy was also tied to her belief, fostered at Good Counsel, “that service is important,” as well as because “I push myself to be the best at everything.” Baur has some family history with military service, with two veterans as grandfathers. “I’m also excited for the structure I’ll have, to have a sure path in life,” she said.

Baur is a member of St. Jerome’s Parish in Hyattsville, which she attended for elementary and middle school, and where her brother and she volunteered with St. Jerome’s Café, which serves hot meals to those in need once a week.

As for the complications of the pandemic on her last year and a half of high school, Baur and her family struggled, especially at first. Her mother, a nurse, and her physical therapist father struggled to do their jobs during the very scary periods of the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.

“Those first six months were really challenging to figure out,” Baur told the Catholic Standard. Her mom was employed as a school nurse, so she wasn’t put at the kind of risk of infection like hospital workers were. Instead, her job focused on how to keep the school community safe. But her dad’s physical therapy job is to treat elderly patients in their homes. That meant the entire family hunkered down at home to minimize risks.

Virtual school taught her some lessons about herself, she said, especially as activities like band and lacrosse were suspended.

“I realized that for me, math and science were a lot easier to attend and to engage in than English and literature,” she said. “It also opened my eyes to the needs of health care.” Baur said she had always thought her career path might lie in medicine, but the pandemic helped her understand “how much more is needed” to ensure vulnerable people have access to essential health care.

Baur reports to the Naval Academy on July 1.