Playing the cello in his school’s orchestra was a natural fit, literally, for David Oluigbo, the valedictorian for the class of 2021 at St. John’s College High School in Washington, D.C.

“For me, the cello was the easiest instrument to play. I’m very tall, 6-foot-3,” he said, explaining why he chose the large string instrument, adding that playing the violin would have been tricky for him.

The section leader for St. John’s orchestra, which earned an excellent rating at the Walt Disney Music Festival, said he appreciated the team aspect of that experience.

“An orchestra is all (about) collaboration. Each of the different instruments have to play together,” he said.

Oluigbo added, “Teamwork has been a large part of what I am today.”

His teamwork was also demonstrated as the captain of the hurdlers and jumpers for St. John’s track and field team, where his main events were the 400-meters, the 300-meter hurdles, the 55-meter hurdles and the 110-meter hurdles. The St. John’s track and field team won the District of Columbia’s indoor championship.

“It (the track team) feels like a second community. All of us are working toward the same objective – getting better and decreasing our times at specific events,” he said, noting the strong bond that teammates formed among each other.

Oluigbo, a 17-year-old native of England, is the son of Nigerian immigrants, both of whom are doctors – his father, Dr. Chima Oluigbo, is a surgeon at Children’s National Hospital, and his mother, Dr. Nnenna Oluigbo, works in internal medicine at Medstar Washington Hospital Center. The St. John’s graduating senior has a younger brother, Michael, who is a second grader at Blessed Sacrament School in Washington, where David Oluigbo also attended from the sixth through the eighth grade after earlier attending Catholic schools in Connecticut and Ohio after their family moved to the United States.

These past four years, David Oluigbo – a nondenominational Christian – has been right at home at St. John’s, where he has excelled as a student and participated in many extracurricular and service activities.

Attending that Catholic school, he said, has taught him “not to have a narrow view of the world. St. John’s encouraged me to open up my eyes and search out these volunteering activities, (and) to understand there’s people facing problems you may not think of. Service helps you reach out to people.”

While at St. John’s, Oluigbo served as a tutor at a program called For Love of Children, a nonprofit that serves underprivileged D.C. students, where he tutored mostly fourth and fifth graders in math, helping them catch up with their peers in their studies.

“I got to interact with them, and I got to know them. It meant a lot to me,” he said. “The reason I found it rewarding, (is that) with tutoring, you actually see how your students benefit from it” and see how they are progressing.

That tutoring experience, he said, helped him see the educational disparities faced by poor children. 

From 2019-20, he also served as a Dr. Bear Ambassador at Children’s National Hospital, assisting workers and volunteers, passing out supplies in the emergency and outpatient rooms, and serving as a greeter and front desk assistant.

The student, who hopes to work in medicine someday, said that service helped him “understand the ins and outs of hospitals, how they function.”

Another key aspect of Oluigbo’s St. John’s years has been problem solving. He and a friend started a math club there, which involved students working to solve math problems and practice questions from math exams.

Oluigbo also participated for four years on St. John’s It’s Academic team, where participants were quizzed on a variety of subjects. “It’s expanded my knowledge range,” he said.

His favorite classes at St. John’s included Advanced Placement physics, which again involved problem solving along with utilizing concepts and formulas, and A.P. history, which he said offered different perspectives on historical events and “taught me critical thinking skills.”

Like other students during the coronavirus shutdown, Oluigbo adjusted to virtual learning at home, adding that he missed seeing his friends in person, but that the orchestra members were still able to practice together online. He praised the work of St. John’s teachers, who along with students pivoted over the past year to virtual, then hybrid and in-person learning.

Asked what he had learned from the experience of living through the pandemic, he said, “The main lesson is to be grateful with what you have when you have it.”

This fall, Oluigbo will attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s leaning toward majoring in computational biology, which involves using biological data to develop algorithms or models to understand biological systems and relationships.

His ultimate educational goal is to enter medical school, following in the path of his parents. He expressed admiration for how they, as immigrants from Nigeria, had worked their way up to serving now as physicians in Washington.

“They taught me the value of hard work, (that) if I have my eye set on a goal, nothing is impossible if I put the maximum effort” toward it, he said.

And in pursuing a medical career, Oluigbo will be drawing on key aspects of his years at St. John’s – teamwork, service and problem solving.

“Obviously, medicine’s main objective is to help people. It involves a lot of collaboration, with doctors of different specialties working together,” he said, adding that the goal is to treat the condition, and help the patient heal, leave the hospital and go home.