DACC’s Tucky plans future in conservation

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

DACC’s Han­nah Tucky

It was dur­ing sum­mers grow­ing up in Delaware that Han­nah Tucky would go each day to the zoo with her fam­ily and come to love all the ani­mals — espe­cially the gorillas.

And it is this love of ani­mals that has deter­mined her plans for the future. Attend­ing Zoo School through the Delaware Area Career Cen­ter, the senior has plans to work with endan­gered ani­mals in her future.

“I’m think­ing the great apes, pri­ma­tol­ogy,” she said, admit­ting it is still early to make a final deci­sion. But she does know that she wants to work in the field with either biol­ogy or zool­ogy and travel to dif­fer­ent coun­tries. She is con­sid­er­ing pro­grams at Otter­bein, Kent State, Wright State or Ohio State uni­ver­si­ties to study zool­ogy, biol­ogy or envi­ron­men­tal science.

Right now as a senior the one thing she looks for­ward to is writ­ing her the­sis. “Most kids don’t say that,” she said, adding she is excited to do the work.

Last year in Zoo School, her study was on the aggres­sion of lori­keets, check­ing the sound lev­els within the enclo­sure for the par­rots. This year she is doing a study on the apes, specif­i­cally Annaka’s group. The sil­ver­back has had a heart mon­i­tor inserted, and so Han­nah is col­lect­ing data by obser­va­tion to com­pare with the data in the chip.

Attend­ing classes both at the zoo and then back at her home school at Hayes High School, Han­nah said she does a lot of bal­anc­ing, some­times not sleeping.

“But when you see what you get out of it, it’s totally worth it,” she said.

Besides school, Han­nah plays soft­ball. Play­ing since age 4, she plays the sport year round.

“It’s really a lot of fun,” she said, not­ing she has friends from all over the state.

Yet even with the long his­tory with the sport, she said once in col­lege she plans to focus on her stud­ies and maybe only play club ball.

Among other activ­i­ties that keep Han­nah busy are her vol­un­teer efforts through her church for Peo­ple In Need, work­ing at var­i­ous soup kitchens and work­ing with the Run the Race Club for under­priv­i­leged youth in inner city Columbus.

Sarah Ressler is an Eng­lish teacher at Hayes who says that Han­nah has been “a won­der­ful stu­dent” to have in her classes.

“Both as a sopho­more in human­i­ties and now as a senior in AP lit­er­a­ture, Hannah’s insights in class dis­cus­sions and cheer­ful demeanor regard­ing lit­er­a­ture and analy­sis makes her a joy to teach,” Ressler said. “Han­nah is always will­ing to tutor fel­low stu­dents and remains pas­sion­ate about her zoo school pro­gram. I’m incred­i­bly impressed with her ded­i­ca­tion to her work and her pos­i­tive atti­tude — she is a great artist, intel­li­gent stu­dent and cheer­ful friend.”

Jor­dan Black­burn is a social stud­ies teacher at Hayes. He said that Han­nah is “intel­li­gent, thought­ful and dri­ven. She finds a way to make things work. She doesn’t whine or com­plain when things don’t go her way, she buck­les down and makes ‘IT’ hap­pen. She bal­ances an extremely dif­fi­cult sched­ule at Hayes, while tak­ing sev­eral courses on zool­ogy at the Colum­bus Zoo, and is also involved in sev­eral extracur­ric­u­lar activities.”

Black­burn said that “a lot of what we accom­plish in life has to do with the expec­ta­tions we set before hand, com­bined with what we do when we encounter set­backs. (Hannah’s) tough­ness is some­thing I’ve always admired because she never quits on her­self, or lets thoughts of becom­ing over­whelmed with life’s chal­lenges enter her mind.”

He added that Hannah’s integrity and her work ethic set her apart.

“She’s dif­fer­ent than most and there­fore she will accom­plish quite a bit over the course of her life,” he said.

Black­burn said, “We have more kids who have been pushed hard by par­ents in all aspects of life from the time they were born to when they get into high school now. Han­nah is the type of kid pro­duced through an envi­ron­ment where dis­ci­pline, high stan­dards and an under­stand­ing that the par­ents are in charge, exists. It’s excit­ing that a young lady like her ‘wins’ awards like this, because she lives suc­cess each day. It’s encour­ag­ing that the per­cent­age of kids each year enter­ing our high school who have high stan­dards and are equipped with the tools to excel, is increas­ing. This makes teach­ing more fun.”

On being a senior, Han­nah said, “It’s so weird. I still hang with the same friends I have had since preschool, yet not know­ing where we will be in the future.” She added it was a bit bit­ter­sweet to leave behind her friends, yet she real­ized the oppor­tu­ni­ties for her future are ahead of her.

For now, she is just hop­ing to spend time together before they all go off their sep­a­rate ways.

“I’m excited,” she said of the prospects. Han­nah had the fol­low­ing advice for underclassmen.

“Don’t change who you are for school or friends. I should have been more myself my fresh­man year.” She went on to explain that she was quiet when she first came to Hayes from St. Mary’s. “I wish I had been more out of my shell.”

Han­nah is the daugh­ter of Todd and Mimi Tucky of Delaware.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Oct 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.