When Ana Hunter ’23 wants to know more about something, she dives right into it. She has explored her love of storytelling and STEM in her 15 years at Hutchison.
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At Hutchison, Ana Hunter ’23 Found a Spark for Storytelling, and She Has More Stories to Share
The 15-year student and recent recipient of the Ideal Hutchison Girl Award credits Hutchison for providing opportunities for her to delve deeper into her interests and helping her become a strong student and creative innovator.
From her narrative and spoken word poetry to co-founding two STEM student groups to pursuing her career dreams in video game design, Ana Hunter ’23 truly exemplifies “anywhere she can imagine.” Ana saw herself as a writer, singer, dancer, golfer, photographer, gamer, and coder and then made them all happen. “Hutchison showed me not to back down when I’m going after something,” she said.
Not only did Ana go after her goals with creativity, ingenuity, and determination, but she also inspired her classmates along the way. At commencement for the Class of 2023, she received the Ideal Hutchison Girl Award, which is voted upon by the graduating seniors and presented to a senior best representing the ideal woman as described in Proverbs 31: honest, understanding, trustworthy, courteous, humble, industrious, sincere, obedient, and noble.
In addition to these traits, Ana is a strong scholar and credits Hutchison for her academic success. “I would 100% say that Hutchison encourages us to push our limits and get outside of our comfort zone,” she said. During her senior year, she received the Sara & Leonard Frey Award, given to a student committed to the life of the mind and to the active pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Ana said she used to be a perfectionist and was fixated on grades, but her teachers helped her ease out of it and focus on the joy of learning.
“My teachers taught me to take a step back when I need to and take note of what I’ve accomplished,” she said. “I learned to take the time to appreciate where I am in the moment.”
At this moment, Ana is preparing to head to the University of Southern California and start to pursue a career in the video game industry. She is an avid video game player, and as she played different games over the years, she would research how they were made, which piqued her interest. As Ana expressed her interest, Hutchison provided opportunities for her to explore, and she took up many opportunities on her own as well, such as Girls Who Code and QubitxQubit Quantum Computing Summer Camp. She remains the only Hutchison sophomore to have ever taken AP Computer Science. In the class, she enjoyed the opportunity to create a game for an assignment, and her teacher Laura Rangarajan also connected her with mentors who provided insight. Ana realized that a big part of her love for video games is the narrative aspect, and that is what she wants to create.
“Some of my favorite video games are stories that get you involved with the characters’ lives,” she said. “I want to create the narrative and determine how a player gets immersed in the world.”
To follow her interests in gaming and engineering, she co-founded two student groups with Zoe Zerwig Ford ’23: the Society of Women Engineers Next Club (SWENext) and the HIVE Mind eSports League. During SWENext’s first year, about 10 girls joined, and the club has steadily grown. Members participate in various STEM projects and hear from speakers within each discipline of engineering. As a leader of SWENext, Ana moderated a panel featuring women in various engineering careers, including a biomedical engineering professor, a civil engineer, and an electrical engineer. One of Ana’s favorite quotes is, “What you leave should be bigger than you,” and she is proud to have an impact on aspiring engineers at Hutchison.
“SWENext is going to be able to progress and become bigger than it is now. I’m excited to see it continue to introduce all these students to whatever they might want to do in engineering or maybe let them know what they don’t want to do,” she said.
For the HIVE Mind eSports League, Ana applied for and received a grant from Logitech for the high-powered PCs required for competitions. During the group’s first year of competition in 2019, the High School Esports League awarded HIVE Mind the Adopting Excellence Award. This past summer through the Institute for Responsible Citizenship, she completed a virtual mentorship with the East Tennessee State University ESports team to learn more about how to expand the Hutchison team.
To help students learn more about engineering and esports, Ana moderated a panel featuring local women in engineering careers and interviewed executives at the High School Esports League and Generation Esports.
Hutchison also helped Ana find her voice, especially through writing and poetry. She started writing poems when she was in the eighth grade, and she would show her work to then-middle school ELA teacher Savannah McCausland, who now teaches 10th graders. Ms. McCausland and several teachers served as mentors to the young poet and motivated her to keep writing.
“My teachers have been helpful in critiquing and giving me commentary on my work. Their advice pushed me toward going more into writing and finding my voice in a way that I know I can use in the future,” she said.
Ana went from writing poetry as an emotional outlet for herself to sharing her work and embracing vulnerability in front of hundreds of Hutchison students and faculty. For example, instead of a more traditional senior speech, she chose to commemorate Black Poetry Day by delivering her speech in the form of a spoken word poem. Many people at the convocation were amazed by Ana's writing and performance. Her work has been celebrated outside of the Hutchison community as well. She won Gold Keys in the regional Scholastic Writing Awards in 2021 and 2023, and she recently won first place in the Tom Lee Poetry and Spoken Word Contest. Ana also learned to express herself by singing in Vocal Point and performing as a member of the upper school dance company.
Ana's Poetic Advice to Hutchison Girls:
“I encourage you to find your outlet, your light, that thing that makes you feel more than a moment of being free. That thing that makes you feel like you will return to it practically and inevitably. It will come when your times are the toughest and you can bear no more. It will come when you think your purpose is long overworn. Don't put a timer on when you think your light should come. That's like rushing to the end before the movie has begun.”
Ana said she is sad to leave the only place that has felt like home outside of her family home, but she is looking forward to her future at the University of Southern California. Her ultimate career goal is to create a game entirely of her own, from concept to programming to design and production, and her dream video game has a connection to Hutchison. It’s based on a short story she wrote in Ms. McCausland’s class in eighth grade, but you’ll have to wait until it is produced to see what story she wants to tell.
Elizabeth Austin ’20, a junior at Middlebury College in Vermont, has been selected for a Udall Foundation Scholarship. She will receive a $7,000 grant to focus on her research in the emerging field of conservation paleontology.
Rising juniors and seniors who are part of four myExperience cohorts in Hutchison's Institute for Responsible Citizenship – global civic engagement, entrepreneurship, STEM, and art and design – explored their respective fields of study on trips to New York and Boston.
The 15-year student and recent recipient of the Ideal Hutchison Girl Award credits Hutchison for providing opportunities for her to delve deeper into her interests and helping her become a strong student and creative innovator.
The National Merit Finalist and 15-year student has distinguished herself by pursuing challenging academic opportunities in math and science and following her various interests along the way. She credits Hutchison for fostering her intellectual curiosity and love of learning.
Fifteen-year student and National Merit Commended Student Brooke Fair ’23 is an award-winning singer-songwriter who has released an album, an EP, and several singles all before graduating high school. This talented artist also is a dedicated student whose music accomplishments have come while achieving academic success.
Fifteen-year student Emmy Walton ’23 has put her heart into becoming a rocket scientist one day. After developing her interests in science and math through various STEM opportunities at Hutchison, she will follow her dreams at one of the nation’s top schools for engineering, Purdue University.
The National Merit Finalist was challenged by Hutchison’s various academic and extracurricular activities. From the tennis court to the courtroom to the classroom, Sarah is a well-rounded, hardworking Hutchison student who lives up to the school’s mission of inspiring girls to go anywhere they can imagine.
Eve-Elyse Hall ’23 has been known for setting up her teammates on the volleyball court throughout an excellent high school career. Now she’s setting herself up for a bright future after choosing to sign to play volleyball at Asbury University in Kentucky.
Hutchison world language students participated in the 2023 U of M Language Fair, sponsored by The University of Memphis Department of World Languages and Literatures. Demonstrating their knowledge of Spanish and Chinese, Hutchison had a total of 21 students win awards at the fair.
Note to the State of Tennessee: If you want to get legislation passed, put Hutchison girls in charge! Seventeen juniors wrote and presented six bills at the YMCA Youth in Government conference in Nashville. All of the bills made it onto the Senate and House dockets, and one was signed into law.
JK girls aren’t scared of these bones! They were fearless and loved being scientists as they took a closer look at the animal bone collection of Lauren Pharr Parks ’02, alumna and mom to Patty Mae ’36.
Seven upper school students will participate in high-intensity summer programs in subjects including computational physics, international studies, and visual arts at universities across the state.