Hereford High School senior and National Merit Scholarship winner Kenna O'Rourke has been a 4.0 student throughout her high school career, but she's not perfect.
O'Rourke's overall SAT score of 2330 fell shy of the maximum 2400, despite perfect scores on the reading and writing sections of the test.
A Sparks resident who also takes kung fu, O'Rourke has a course load that includes advanced placement English, economics and anatomy.
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One of her favorite classes is an art course called advanced placement studio.
"You sort of just build up your art skills in the visual arts and explore your personal direction, and that direction can be whatever you want it to be." O'Rourke said. "But I do painting and drawing mostly. I'm proud of my most recent piece. It was oil paint, but it was environmentally-based."
O'Rouke, 17, has a powerful message in her recent piece,"Green Space."
"My intent was to convey the overwhelming impact that humanity has on the environment by painting massive amounts of garbage surrounding a figure," she said. "The figure is holding a pot with small trees sprouting from it. I sewed together the pieces of canvas with plastic bags to add to the unnatural effect of the superimposed trash."
A fan of fiction writing, O'Rourke is headed for the University of Pennsylvania, where she will study English with a concentration in creative writing and perhaps a minor in art.
O'Rourke is president of Hereford's National Art Society and on the Teen Arts Counsel for the Walters Art Museum in downtown Baltimore.
"We try to engage teens in art museums and we also do workshops, where we go to high schools within the Baltimore area and we talk about art and have discussions," she said.
O'Rourke is also involved with Hereford's costume crew. She has worked with various theater productions since her freshman year.
"If I had to pick one actual piece that I'm proud of it was from the play Seussical, which is a Dr. Seuss-based musical, and those were some wacky costumes," O'Rourke said. "But I have to say that the main perk of being on costume crew is that it's a really great community and a really supportive community. I've made a lot of strong friendships within it."
