Zoe Honigberg has viewed life somewhat as a competition during her first eighteen years of existence. 
“Watching my older sister — she was eighth in her class, took a lot of APs like I am, a very good athlete — I looked up to her a lot, and I wanted to be like her.”
Honigberg had intentions of being as successful, or more so, than her eldest sister, Celia.
“I’m taking some of the same  APs, and when doing the projects I wonder if my sister did this and I wonder what she got in it. It pushed me. I wanted to be as good. I wanted to be better,” Honigberg said.
Following graduation in June she’ll do her own unique thing by taking a gap year to explore Germany in a town just north of Hamburg. Honigberg later plans to attend Connecticut College, starting in 2017.
In Germany Honigberg will act as an au pair (nanny) for the au pair who joined her family here in the United States when Honigberg was two.
“When I was younger I used to have au pairs for the first ten years of my life. Young women from different countries would come and live with my family and be a third sister,” she explained.
Senior year has been a busy one for Hongiberg, a scholar athlete who has played varsity softball for three years, varsity volleyball for two and cross country skiing for one, as a freshman. This year she served as secretary for the Varsity Club, took part in National Honor Society, and was chosen along with 27 other students to be a part of the Capitol Area Student Leadership Program.
One of her fondest memories from her years at CHS was the featuring of the unified basketball team as the centerpiece of the winter pep rally. “Administration was very hesitant to let us go for it. They worried about how players would react to a large crowd,” Honigberg explained.
“All of the tears shed by players were tears of joy and happiness. It was really special to watch the students cheer for the unified team as they would for any other sports team,” she said.
Honigberg is excited about her future but reports feeling a little sad at the idea of leaving friends and bonds she has known all her life.
“It’s hard to think about not being with them all the time,”she said.
Away from campus this summer, Honigberg will divide her time between Granite Ledges, an assisted living home in Concord, where she works as a waitress, and the softball field, playing for the U-18 Comets, and of course with friends.
“Imagining where we are going to be in five years, in ten years, in twenty years: these are the people I have grown up with and know best,” said Honigberg, already beginning to reminisce.