Bethlehem teen Xrysanthi Sokaris attends week long FBI Academy

The FBI has an eye on her

DELMAR – 16 year-old Bethlehem Central School District student Xrysanthi Sokaris graduated on June 28, not from high school, but from an eight-day program hosted at the FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. Sokaris, a rising high school junior, was one of 62 students selected nationwide to attend the FBI’s 25th National Academy Associates Youth Leadership Program and learn about being an FBI agent.

According to an FBI press release, the program supports “exceptional young leaders’ drive for knowledge and their desire to make a difference in the world.”  The program includes fitness training, classroom time and field experience and aims to “develop an influential community of socially conscious and service minded leaders.”

Sokaris said she became interested after participating in the Town’s Youth Court.  Following a rigorous application process, Sokaris learned she and one other New York student had beaten out about 50 regional applicants for a program seat. Sokaris credited her Lab School experience with her admission and program success.

“Lab School provided a very similar experience.  We were a small group of people and had to make presentations, work as a group and speak publicly,” Sokaris said.  “From Lab School I knew how to explain things without over explaining and how to stay on topic.”

After flying to Washington D.C., Sokaris said she was met by an unmarked vehicle and ultimately driven to FBI headquarters. Background checks and passing through two security gates followed. Sokaris described how they were given uniforms of khaki pants and blue shirts, not allowed piercings or colored hair.

Mornings involved 5 a.m. wake-ups and exercises simulating FBI agent training, such as timed dead man’s arm hangs and daily runs of running up and down hills, stairs, and a knee-deep mud puddle.  Sokaris said the mud puddle was fun but “unfortunate” because she had bought new shoes for the program, “but they were so caked in mud by the end I had to throw them out.”

Several daily hours of classroom time was devoted to firearms training, cybersecurity, financial issues, forensics, extraction of a shooter, live actor shooter techniques, and leadership skills.

In the field, Sokaris said they learned about bombs.  Her program highlight was pushing the buttons to detonate a bomb while standing behind a wall.  “I could see the explosion through a small rectangle with a viewing area,” she said.  “It was a once in a lifetime experience,” she said.

Sokaras said her main takeaway from the program was about leadership.  “You can be a leader but you have to be doing it for the right reasons.” She thinks she may one day go into law enforcement or forensics professionally.  For now, she is on her way to Europe to tour across Italy, German and Austria, with her viola for an American Music Abroad orchestra.

To her classmates who might be interested in the FBI program, she said, ‘go for it!”, but she wanted “it’s much longer than a school day of taking notes and making presentations and it can get tiring.”

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