By Maddy Vitale
Students at Saint Joseph Regional School in Somers Point had an exciting guest Wednesday afternoon. Miss America 2018 Cara Mund visited the school and spoke to students about their dreams and how to make them come true with hard work and determination.
Mund, 23, who was Miss North Dakota before capturing the crown, told students that it took her four tries, but the most important thing was she never gave up. With her achievement came, travel, opportunities and mostly importantly, she said, scholarship money.
“If you are afraid of failure you are never going to accomplish anything,” she told the students.
She told the students, who waved flags they made with her photo on them, that she was told that she didn’t fit the mold to win Miss America. She was told to cut her hair, dye her hair, change the color of her gown, not to tell people what school she went to.
Mund did not listen.
Instead, she went for it and won the title, without changing herself into the person she was told she should be.
“It took me four years to win. There is no set mold. You don’t ever have to change to get there,” Mund said.
Mund, 23, whose platform is A Make-A-Wish Passion with Fashion, is an Ivy League Honors Graduate from Brown University with plans to go to law school.
She told students that she enjoys going to visit children’s hospitals to try and brighten their days.
“The legacy you leave is the impact you have made on others,” Miss America told the students.
Then students had a chance to ask Miss America questions. Many students waved their hands in hopes that they would be selected.
One student asked Mund who her role model was growing up.
“My mom,” she said.
Another student asked if she went to school with Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz.
Not only did she go to school with him, but told the students that in their yearbook, he was voted most likely to become a quarterback, and she was voted most likely to become Miss America. The children ahhed.
Another student asked Mund her favorite sports. She said she likes dancing, figure skating and gymnastics.
At the end of the presentation third grade teacher Sylvia Mary McFadden, founder of the Book Project, told Miss America that students in third to sixth grade had a special surprise for her.
She presented Mund with a book and explained that each year the children in the Book Project make a book for charity and wanted to give her a copy.
Mund thanked the students and with a big smile, posed with the students holding her gift.
She left the children with one final thought.
“I always wanted to be Miss North Dakota, but I never thought I’d be Miss America,” Mund told the students. “The sky is the limit for you.”
Earlier in the day Mund visited with the students at Jordan Road Elementary School in Somers Point.
