Senior shines in the AG department
Eden Peterson’s sweet nature throws people off of the trail of her steely determination, but her persistent spirit shines through her FFA competitions.
Shakespeare asked, “what’s in a name?” Well, if your name is Eden Monroe Peterson, there’s a lot. There is her four years of Ag Leadership, two years of journalism, her spot on Paso’s first Veterinary Science Team, and her experience raising three lambs.
She lived in a four bedroom house with eight people before she moved to Reno, Nevada and started school there. After a year, in which seven of the eight people moved to Reno and lived together in an apartment, she moved back to Paso. She was homeschooled for a few months before she was placed in a classroom with a mashup of first to fifth graders. After a couple more months, where her only memories were a spanish speaker fourth grader and another first grader who made his own head bleed, she was moved back to a regular first grade class, and met senior Dakota Rodriguez, and they have been friends for 12 years.
And yet the friendship that spanned a decade was orchestrated by her aunt in an attempt to make Eden new friends.
“I’ve just always thought that we became friends because she thought ‘Oh that is a cool kid and I’m going to approach her, and be her friend’ but it turns out that my aunt told my teacher that I needed friends, and my teacher told Dakota to be my friend. So really we are only friends because Dakota felt bad for me.”
But after fifth grade she was uprooted again, and forced to go to Lewis Middle School, when all of her friends went to Flamson.
And then freshman year she started a class that changed her whole idea of what a comfort zone was. She had signed up for Ag leadership based on the description in the orientation booklet, but when she arrived, she felt like she was in way over her head. She was intimidated by the large number of juniors and seniors in the class and the fact that she was required to show an animal.
She didn’t drop the class, but she was still forced into situations that pushed her “I kind of got thrown into stuff, like Mr. Clement told me that I was doing Creed, and Opening and Closing. So I kind of got thrown out of my comfort zone, which I think is good, because I would have never done that stuff on my own.”
That experience lead her to be one of four upperclassmen to compete with Paso’s first Vet Science team.
The competition season is short with only four competitions, three of which have already passed.
The team, which is called a CDE, or Career Development Event, team placed 20 out of 43 teams in Modesto at their first competition. Peterson scored highly individually, with the second highest score on the written test portion of the event.
The competitions have five parts, three identification portion, one written exam of fifty questions, and a practicum, with three exercises that competitors are judged on. The written exam is made up of 50 questions, and Peterson got 49 of them right at the Modesto competition. The identification portions involve learning and classifying over 500 breeds of animals, 200 tools, and _ of parasites.
At the second competition at Cal Poly Pomona, the team jumped to fifth place out of 35 teams, and the individuals all placed in the top thirty of 111 individual competitors. Peterson placed 11.
“I really admire Eden because she’s so kind and super funny! Being around her always lightens up my day and puts a smile on my face because she is so hilarious and thoughtful. She’s going to go on to do amazing things and I can’t wait to see what those are!” junior Jacob Bausch said.
“She’s really kind, and hilarious, and dedicated, even if she hates something she’ll keep trying. She always brightens my day, because she’s really funny and so uplifting. And even if she’s not happy she’ll do her best to make other people happy, which is really admirable.” said senior Morgan Moretti, Peterson’s friend for over five years.
