Yesterday we learned that Eden earned something pretty huge. And she did it all on her own. No help from anyone.
She earned the Levering Scholarship at St. Paul’s School for Girls. This scholarship is awarded to one middle schooler and two high schoolers each year. And Eden earned it. I am so proud of her. Most importantly though, she is proud of herself.
When I got home yesterday, I congratulated her and gave her a hug. She looked like she grew half a foot.
Her essay is below. Her task was to describe an experience that demonstrated her creativity, energy and perseverance.
Levering Scholarship Essay
Eden Kennedy
The summer after I turned 9, my grandfather, Pop Pop, took me crabbing. There was a lot of planning that went into the trip. There were a lot of problems on the boat, and I needed to be creative to solve them. Crabbing took a lot of hard work and I used a lot of energy. I never gave up, even at the hardest times. At every part of my crabbing adventure, I was tested on my creativity, energy and perseverance.
My adventure started at 3:45 when my dad woke me up. Pop Pop picked me up at 4. As we were driving on the Bay Bridge, the sun came up over us. On one side, the sky was black like space, and on the other side, the sun glowed like an orange star. The reflection on the water looked like a nebula. We arrived at the dock. Pop Pop and I had to load up all of our supplies from the car into the boat. It was harder than I thought it would be. I was determined to catch a bushel of crabs. As the boat left the dock, we were off. That was the beginning of our adventure.
At around 7, we dropped the trotline in the water. The trotline weighed about 30-40 pounds. As we were working, the line broke. We saw a commercial crabber’s line break, and he just left it. But not us, I was not going to give up. We didn’t have any extra rope in the boat, so we had to tie it together. As we were fixing our line, our boat got stuck in the mud. I had the idea to use our paddles to push us out of the mud. When we got out of the mud, the motor turned back on and the trot line got all tangled in the motor. We had to fix it. So, we pulled the motor up. It weighed about 200 pounds. We tied the top of it to one of the chairs. And we tied the bottom too. Then I got into the water and untangled the line from the motor. I got back in the boat and we hauled in the rest of our trotline. No crabs.
We dropped the trotline again, and then guess what. We ran out of gas. We paddled to the end of our trotline. There were no boats around. I remembered that the man who rented us the boat gave us a piece of paper in case of emergency. And I remembered that Pop Pop had put the paper in our Ziploc bag with our licenses. We called him and he came and filled our tank with gas. By noon, we only had about 3 crabs. We did not give up.
We kept dropping the line in the water. Then we’d go from one end to the other trying to catch crabs. I steered the boat and Pop Pop worked the net. My arms were not long enough to get the net down in the deep water. Then the box for the trotline fell out of the boat and I had to fish it back in with the net.
After we had dropped the line 9 times, we had only caught about a dozen crabs. It was 5pm and we needed to return the boat by 6. I told Pop Pop we should move to the other side of the bay. So we did. And this time, we caught 12 crabs! We needed to head back, but Pop Pop got lost. I saw the lighthouse that I remembered from the morning, and I told Pop Pop where we needed to go. I was right. We found our way back. We unloaded the boat, and the two of us had to carry everything back to the car. It was harder than I thought it was going to be. I fell asleep on the ride home.
I was determined to catch a bushel. As it turns out, I only caught two dozen. I pulled my own weight and I am proud of myself. I showed creativity with solving problems. I showed energy with all of the hard work. And I showed perseverance by never giving up. Despite all of the problems, that was some adventure.
Six With Sticks 