2007 Citizen Awards
Trinity High School graduate Jennifer Fornek needs neither carrot nor stick.
“I always just had a self-drive,” she said. “My philosophy is, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”
Being valedictorian wasn’t something she’d been shooting for. Jennifer learned at the beginning of her senior year that she was ranked at the top of her class academically. “Once I realized [I was ranked first], it was just an added incentive to keep working,” she said.
Jennifer crossed the finish line still in the lead with a 4.760 grade point average on a 5.0 weighted scale.
But she also pushed herself athletically. Too much so, in fact.
Before high school she played soccer and softball, but wanted to try something different in high school. In the spring of her freshman year, she went out for track and “fell in love with the team.”
She says her friends were responsible for getting her to come out for cross country the next fall.
Lucky thing because she went on to set school records at 11 courses as a junior. Her best time on any 3-mile course was 18:50. She was gearing up for a great senior year.
But she pushed too hard, she said, tearing a ligament in her ankle, which needed surgery in May 2006. The time off hurt her performances in her senior year.
“Doing what I do best was my downfall,” she said.
Jennifer speaks in clear, straightforward sentences in a voice loud enough you’re sure to hear. Her voice seems to speak in a larger way for who she is: determined, dedicated and self-assured.
She thanks her Trinity education in part for that.
Besides faith being a “pretty important part of [her] life,” she appreciated the single-gender experience, where she could just be herself.
“It ended up being a good thing because when you’re not surrounded by boys, there’s less pressure to impress them,” she said.
But now she’s ready to head to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she’ll study civil engineering.
“I always wanted to go and be surrounded by lots of people,” she said. “I’m ready to kind of blend in. I’m tired of standing out.”
She’s taking a physics class this summer at Maine South High School “to get ahead” and be sure she’s ready for the challenging curriculum.
“Engineering was a way I thought I could combine math and art,” she said. Jennifer hopes one day to work reviewing structural plans-“the kind of things that make sure buildings don’t collapse.”
The captain of both the cross country and track teams, an International Baccalaureate candidate, and a member of student council, it seems Jennifer herself is structurally sound.