Two years ago, sophomore Tallie Kerr and close friend, sophomore Maddie Mehls took a church trip to Valleyfair, an amusement park in Minnesota. They stayed overnight in a hotel and had intended to turn in for the night around 10:00 p.m., but ended up staying awake until 4:00 in the morning, giggling and were unable to stop talking.

The girls were exhausted the next day, but Mehls said it was one of the greatest memories she has ever had. “It was especially nice because it was supposed to be a rainy day, but it held off, so nobody was there and we got to go from ride to ride and barely had to wait in line,” Kerr said. “It was a really fun trip.”

Mehls has been friends with Kerr her entire life.  “Our dads went to college together, so it’s not really like a friendship, more like we’re sisters,” Mehls said.

She says Kerr has a ‘one of a kind’ personality. “She’s very funny,” Mehls said. “Her facial expressions are what gets me the most. She’s just so great.”

Mehls said Kerr has greatly impacted her life. “She’s more outgoing than me so she makes me be more confident and social with people,” Mehls said. “I used to be like really quiet and now I’m not as quiet as I used to be because of her. She’s just a good person to know in my life.”

In Kerr’s life, she said her greatest impact is her family and friends. “They just support me in the things that I do,” she said. “They try to get me to try new things and interest me in topics I haven’t thought about before.” One of the things they support Kerr in is her academics, which is very important to her.

Kerr is currently taking chemistry and pre-calculus in hopes that it will prepare her for what she anticipates to be a difficult junior year. Next year she plans on taking physics and AP Calculus. “I don’t know why I signed up for it, but we’ll give it a shot,” Kerr said.

Tallie’s brother, senior Dawson Kerr, believes that she is a very hard-working and intelligent person.  “She’s a straight ‘A’ student,” he said.

Tallie’s friends agree with him. “She doesn’t show her smartness very much, but secretly, she is a genius,” close friend and teammate of Tallie, sophomore Brooke Wilmes said.

What really sets Tallie apart from the average teenager, though, is her close relationships with her family members. She enjoys spending time with her brother. Their average topics of conversation can range from deep talks about life to political thoughts to just joking around. “He’s a weird person so we just have kind of weird conversations, but it’s a fun relationship,” Tallie said.

The dynamic between Tallie and her parents is similar to her relationship with her brother. “They’re very talkative and they have very intense conversations about things, which I think is kind of weird,” she said. “But they’re funny to hang out with.”

Tallie also has a sister, Kailey Kerr, who is a junior at Iowa State University. Tallie said that her relationship with her sister is different from that of her brother or her parents. “We like each other sometimes [but] we argue a lot,” Tallie said. “We just have very different personalities and so we don’t agree on a lot of things.” However, the sisterly love is still there. “[Kailey] is fun and and she’s always there if I need somebody to talk to,” she said.

Something that seems to run in the Kerr family is humor. “Me, her, and my other sibling, we revolve around being funny,” Dawson said. “If there’s one thing that’s similar it’s that we can make people laugh.”

Making others laugh is a huge part of Tallie’s life. “She is super funny and I love cracking jokes with her,” Wilmes said.