Lauren Kennedy

Lauren Kennedy - Class of 2019

I first became attached to volleyball when my uncle Pete was diagnosed with breast cancer. My favorite memory is playing volleyball with him. When he passed away, my family and I did fundraisers and tournaments. When I came into 8th grade, I was on the high school team, and I fell in love with the group of girls. I liked the team aspects better at first, but then that made me fall in love with the sport as a whole. Without volleyball, I wouldn't have met the same group of girls and I probably wouldn't be as outgoing. There is a lot of pressure on me to play in college by my parents, and I’ve had meetings with division one and division three schools, but I don’t know if I want to play. In college, you’re supposed to find who you wanna be. I don’t really want to play in college because I don’t wanna give up everything to play a sport that probably won't get me anywhere. I mean, I’d wanna get somewhere with volleyball, but it’s just a ton of pressure and I need to focus on school. I feel like that’s more important now. I’ve made my parents happy by meeting with coaches, but at the end of the day it’s really my decision, not theirs. I want to go far away for school. I want to start my own company when I’m older and I feel like if I go far away, it will give me new creative ideas. I’d like to be my own boss, and I think that going off on my own and seeing what I want to do would help me find myself. I feel like I’m held back by, I don’t know, this community. It’s so small and you grow up with the same people and don’t really get to try new things. Volleyball has made me a better person because you grow with your team and become a unit and work as one, but at the same time it has lots of drawbacks for my future. The pressure from my parents makes me try even harder, and if I have scouts at the game, then it puts all of the attention on me and I don’t know, it’s kind of scary to think about. I’m only sixteen, and I don't want to think about the rest of my life right now. I want to live in the moment.

Linus Hsu

Linus Hsu - Class of 2018

When I was four years old, my family moved from Hsinchu, Taiwan to Massachusetts. The change wasn’t as drastic as you’d think it would be. I settled into American life pretty well, picking up basic English in a month or so (according to my parents my first full sentence in English came from me yelling at other kids to give me a turn on the slide, preschool elitists smh). I had to start going by the English name I had picked out during daycare, Linus, because apparently Yuan-Ting is too hard to pronounce. And then they had the audacity to judge me when I didn’t say Hermione correctly on my first try. Like boi, you taught us to sound out long words your way, when you sound out Hermione you break it into Her-mi-one like any logical person would do because it’s the most even syllable spread, of course people are going to say it wrong, JK Rowling. Anyway, I chose Linus because I liked the character from Peanuts. He would suck his thumb and carry around a nice blue blanket everywhere, and had all these idioms he would preach at people randomly. Sounds just like me amirite? Plus, it’s not a common name, and people tend to remember it better than Tim. Tim is what my parents were going to name me. Timothy Hsu. Glad I got out of that one. Anyway, after living in the Residence Inn in Danvers for 3 months and finishing up preschool, my family moved to our first real home in America: a little townhouse in Beverly where I did kindergarten and first grade, then hopped over to Andover, where I completed second, third, and fourth grade. In fifth grade, we moved again to Ipswich, and that’s where I’ve been since.

Ben DiBello

Ben DiBello - Class of 2019

On a Sunday over February Break this year, I was bored and cleaning my room to occupy myself when I found my old handheld GPS. I was looking through the GPS to see if anything may have been saved, when I remembered my GPS could locate geocaches*. Using my GPS, I found a geocache only an hour’s walk away. Having not much else to do, I packed a few items in my bag and headed out.

After walking for about an hour, my GPS began leading me down a trail somewhere by the town wharf. After walking down the trail for close to ten minutes, I found a clearing with a big rock with some plaque on it, and the GPS said the geocache was close. After about twenty minutes of searching, I found an opened Tupperware container that wasn’t in the spot indicated by the GPS. There were a few items strewn around the container, including a plastic top and a notebook with names presumably written inside, but the pages were too wet to be able to tell. I put the items back into the container and buried it. Of course, at that moment, my GPS died. I turned around to go back on the trail, but the trail isn’t there. I must have walked a lot farther than I thought when looking for the geocache, so I spent a little more time trying to find the trail. After a few minutes, I gave up and walked in the direction I thought I came from.

After even more walking, I found a group of huge stone buildings in a field. More than anything, I was confused because I knew I must have been near the town wharf but I have never seen these buildings before. I began walking around these buildings to see if I could find anyone, but no one was around. I ended up coming across these two nuns, and I realized I came out at the Sisters of Notre Dame on Jeffrey's Neck Road. To escape any possible embarrassment this may have brought, I tried my best to avoid getting caught while I found the exit. Thankfully, I found the exit without getting caught, but I must have spent over three hours geocaching and getting lost.

*Geocaches are containers of objects that people bury/hide at random locations whose coordinates are then posted online. These geocaches can be filled with anything, but the general rule is that you take one item to leave another, and when you find the geocache, you sign your name in the notebook.

Carter Tracy

Carter Tracy - Class of 2019

Open on Maryland, June 25th, 2001, Carter Kevin Tracy is born. Son of John and Jacquil Tracy, the world is now a better place. I had a good life in Maryland; full of friendship. But when I was 4, we moved to Massachusetts for my dad's job. Best decision I ever made. I went to preschool at Small World. I had a lot of friends there and everybody was really nice to me. Then, I went to kindergarten at Doyon. In third grade I met Cole. Him, my brother and I have been best friends ever since. I was always the brightest lightbulb in the department store in Doyon, excelling in intelligence and even more in friendship. I started playing sports, like soccer, football, lacrosse and tennis. I was loving it. I had long flowing hair. Then when I entered middle school, I made even more friends, but I kinda sucked at sports. I cruised through middle school and then high school came around. As a freshman, I played football in the fall and tennis in the spring. Towards the end I was playing the best tennis of my life. Then over the summer, I sat back relaxed and worked out for football. I ended up starting both ways on JV during sophomore year. School's going good so far this year and that’s where we’re leaving off thus far in my life's journey.

Alex Rishi

Alex Rishi - Class of 2019

People always look at me as the funny guy who does funny things in class, or cracks a joke every now and then. But I'm not always like that. From 5th to 7th grade I lost three of my grandparents. It was really tough but I found a way to put on that happy face. Recently, I have been struggling with anxiety and depression. That is why I quit the sports that I once did. I was anxious about them and was worried that I wouldn't be able to focus on school or that I would do poorly in them. It has been tough but I am trying to push through, and I just keep on going.

Zoé Duffield

Zoé Duffield - Class of 2017

I was born in Cambodia, but I don't remember anything. Not my parents, not the orphanage, not the beautiful capital city--nothing. My adoptive parents brought me here when I was five months old, and have raised me as an American ever since. I grew up on American food, listened to American music, and immersed myself into the American way of life in every way possible. I know that things could've turned out differently, and am very grateful that they haven't. Yet I can't help but feel a little sad that my blank memories of Cambodia have kept me from truly identifying with my home country. I'm proud of my ethnic background, but it's hard to make any real connection when I don't recall any of it. As a kid I wanted nothing more than to blend in with all the other blue-eyed children around me, but now when people ask me about my birth place, it hurts to answer “I don't know”. It's not necessarily that I want to find my biological parents, or even any biological family at all, but I do wish to become more acquainted with Cambodia. It has a wild and unique history as well as a population of diverse individuals, and I hope that one day I can go back for a while to catch up a bit with what I've missed.

Peyton Fitzgerald

Peyton Fitzgerald - Class of 2017

For the majority of my life, I rarely felt challenged. I cannot say that I knew what failure was or how to adequately deal with it. I had always been regarded as 'the smart kid, and that was what I found my identity in- perfect grades. High school hit like a boulder. After getting my first-ever B in a class (freshman english- I’m sure people can relate), I didn’t know what to do with myself. It seemed like I had lost my identity. On the bus ride home later that week, I was speaking to one of my friends about how the B in this class meant the end of the world (bit of an exaggeration am I right?). She immediately turned to me and said something along the lines of "The fact that school is supposed to teach, and the grade is second to having learned something isn't right." If I had grown from taking that class, being challenged, and failing just a bit, then I had learned something, and that is something to be excited about. I have taken this advice with me throughout high school. I can say that I have done worse in classes and failed in greater capacities many times since then, but I learned that is not what has to define me- I can learn from everything. Fail or succeed, love what you are doing or hate it, that doesn’t matter. Everything serves as a basis for growth. I have flaws (many of them actually) and so does everyone else, but taking this simple idea to heart makes sure that the lows don’t get too low, and life can be good even when it seems bad. Bring it on college...