Alumni Spotlight: Julia Knepper

In celebration of our 25th anniversary of Ambleside School, each month we’ll be featuring a short spotlight article about graduates of our school and what they’re doing now.

When thinking about her time at Ambleside, the word “tight knit” is how Julia describes her experiences. Whether playing flag football on the massive hill by the school or putting on Shakespeare plays, she remembers everyone genuinely enjoying one another's company.

Looking back, she remembers how they didn’t just laugh together — they cared for each other. Like when Julia broke her shoulder in 8th grade during a family ski trip… she recalls how her classmates and teachers supported her when she returned to school. To her that “tight knit” quality is what made her Ambleside experience so special.

Her 5th-8th grade years were also marked by a love for reading books out loud and discussing them as a class. She loved the feeling of getting lost in a story and feeling like she knew the characters personally. She even enjoyed getting to play the characters, too.

One especially fond and funny role play for Julia was in 7th grade. Her class acted out Hamlet for the annual Shakespeare Festival. Julia was Hamlet's dead father who appeared as a ghost throughout the play. Because of the total coverage from her sheet costume and a mishap with the program credits, no one could figure out who Julia was. She surprised everyone at curtain call when she removed her “mask.”

Today, Julia is pursuing a master’s degree in the Physician Assistant program at Portland, Oregon’s George Fox University — graduating in December 2024. Here she continues to use the technique of narration she learned at Ambleside, regularly narrating what she learned in class back to herself. For her, narration is an incredible tool for solidifying the information in her brain.

Even the incorporation of art into her science and nature studies at Ambleside is something she calls on in her graduate studies, where she paints with watercolors the things she’s learning about — like the organs of the abdominal cavity while learning about the gastrointestinal system. These watercolor sessions, for her, always remind her how Ambleside sparked her love for learning… something that has only grown stronger.

Next year, in between bouts of pickleball and comedy shows, Julia and her fiancé, Billy (a financial advisor), will tie the knot and settle down in Bend, Oregon. Until then, she’ll continue to enjoy regular visits with her parents Chris and Susie Knepper (former beloved Spanish teacher at Ambleside) and their puppy, Bennie.