Savannah Hurd soaks up knowledge like a sponge
Savannah Hurd has a well-deserved reputation in her family for deciding what she wants and laying out a single-minded plan to achieve it. No messing around; no diversions. She charts a straight course and rarely deviates from it.
“What can I say,” her mom, Rosene Hurd, said with a laugh. “She’s a redhead.”
The West Valley senior has a passion for science and mathematics, and an equal passion for sharing the knowledge her studies accumulates. At first her goal was to study botany and nutrition, but in the last year she’s refined that goal and plans to study herbal medicine at Pacific Rim College in Victoria, B.C., beginning in the fall.
“I’d have to say my interest in that field came after reading the book ‘Fast Food Nation,’ ” the honor student said. “I got interested in nutrition and what we put in our bodies. I had a food panel done and discovered I had an allergy to chicken and decided to become a vegetarian. I’d been slowly giving up meat for a while by that point – and that’s not an easy thing to do in a family of carnivores.”
Her adviser, Drew Wendle, discovered Hurd’s determination early on.
“When you meet Savannah, she’s probably the least imposing person you can imagine because she’s not very big,” he recalled. “But once you talk to her you discover that she has a passion for what she’s studying and a drive to learn more. She set out as a freshman to take all the math and science courses we have to offer here. In the summer between her freshman and sophomore year she took two semesters worth of science and math – especially calculus. She was determined to get through calculus. By the time she was done with her sophomore year, she’d gone through them all, including our Advanced Placement courses.
“Through Running Start, she’s taken nine college courses, and seven of them are advanced math and science.”
Her daughter’s passion for more knowledge is something Rosene Hurd has come to accept and admire.
“There was a summer when she was younger that I kept urging her to go out and do something fun,” she recalled. “I wanted her to do something fun and not be tied to her books and her studies. I found her downloading stuff and loading it onto her iPod and I thought, ‘Good, she’s interested in music!’ Turns out, she was downloading biology lectures from the Internet and listening to them for fun. I asked, ‘Can’t you find something a little more fun to listen to?’ She said, ‘Mom, this IS fun!’
“She’s been such a great kid, and I am so proud of her. Just watching her has been a joy.”
It should come as no surprise that Hurd already has plans for beyond college.
“What attracted me to the program at Pacific Rim is that it allows me to use what I learn to start a business that would make herbal medicines and supplements available to more people,” she said. “At the same time, it would allow me to work with people individually and treat them. I didn’t want to choose between one or the other. I would really like to do both.”