Adrianna Johnson won this year’s Governor General’s Award for scholastic achievement at Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School (PSO) in 100 Mile House.
The 108 Mile Ranch graduate earned this prestigious award by maintaining a Grade Point Average (GPA) of 98.077 per cent in grades 11-12.
PSO principal Vic Brett says Adrianna met an “unbelievable standard” in achieving this level of marks over two years.
“We are talking very, very, very few students who can achieve that. Especially with the highly rigorous courses that Adrianna took … she always took challenging courses.”
Adrianna says she is “pretty excited” to have won the award – one of just five awarded to Canadian students outside of Calgary – after having won Top Scholar at PSO for the previous two years running.
“I work pretty hard. I was trying to get the top marks in my school each year.”
She juggled her stringent study regime with commuting to play Major Midget AAA Rep hockey, Adrianna adds.
“I felt is was a good way to keep my motivation up, because if you are always busy, the extra stress kind of makes you more determined to get everything done and on time.
“My first year, I was playing in Prince George, so I’d be travelling 4.5 hours to practice there and back on certain days and missing school. So, I was travelling tons, and always doing homework on the bus and in the car – but I’m very study orientated.”
Adrianna explains she was also very involved with a peer counselling group at her school, which was all volunteer time and included helping students to resolve some “pretty heavy” issues.
She dedicated several lunch breaks to learn the course material with PSO teacher Hedda Brett, she explains.
“Mrs. Brett was amazing. We had a really close-knit group this year and led projects through our school.”
Adrianna also tutors fellow students in math, and loves art, writing, fitness and, of course, hockey.
She went to a spring hockey prospects camp in Calgary, where she was invited to the University of Calgary Dinos women’s hockey team tryouts this fall.
Vic says Adrianna is an “incredible and absolutely wonderful human being” and an “outstanding kid with a superlative social conscience beyond her age.”
“She is totally well-rounded. She is a top academic, an athlete, an artist, a very accomplished writer, she’s got all kinds of empathy toward others, she is a peer tutor and she has such high moral fibre and high standards.
“Adrianna’s really the epitome of what I would call a renaissance person – she is just good at everything, and just so engaged in everything she does – and she just gets every ounce of living out of life.”
Adrianna also won the esteemed three-year, all-expenses-paid Seymour Schulich Academic Excellence (SSAE) engineering entrance scholarship at the University of Calgary, where she is enrolled to study science next fall.
“That was quite an ordeal, so I had to write a lot of essays and those kinds of things to apply. I applied to lots of universities.
“But, just having your school paid for is a relief, even for your parents.”
This illustrious recognition also places Adrianna in a special academic community on campus. It includes membership in a leadership group as well as private dorm accommodation conducive to the dedicated studying necessary to maintain the scholarship’s GPA requirements.
Locally, the studious young woman also won the Brent Harris award, Steven Meville award, and both a 100 Mile Rotary Club and a 100 Mile House Lions Club scholarship.
Her plans are to go into chemical engineering, which is normally “competitive to get into,” but the SSAE award guarantees her acceptance, she explains.
Noting the road from there is still uncertain, Adrianna says she might end up working in the Alberta oil industry, or in bioengineering, a medical field that includes things like developing artificial organs.
Thanks to her principal, a framed copy of her poem The Flame hangs in the halls at PSO as her legacy to younger students.
Adrianna says she hopes it will be inspiring to the younger students at PSO to have a role model for achieving their scholastic goals.
“I really like being a leader in my school.”
She adds her parents and siblings have always been an “amazing support system.”
He family constantly cheers her on in her pursuit of academic excellence and the amazing career that surely awaits in Adrianna’s future.
