When asked what she cannot live without, Ebeni Rheann Nelson, confidently answered without hesitation, “a weed whacker.” When asked why such an atypical answer, she responded by saying “in both life and lawns you have to do everything 100%.” By this, she relates weed-whacking the stragglers around the edges to overcoming obstacles in life to complete goals. This quote sums up how Ebeni goes about living her life. She spends a lot of her time working hard at her job at PPD, a plastic processing plant here in Madison. Her amazing work ethic can also be shown in the advice she gives others. Ebeni recommends that you work for private entities in middle and high school, saving your money and hiding it from yourself because “your future needs it, not McDonald's.”
Ebeni enjoys other activities during her limited free time, like watching the CW series The 100, the series Squid Game, making detailed art pieces, or eating her favorite foods such as lasagna and chili. She also loves to spend time with her family and friends. Ebeni is a part of a family of five including herself. She was born to her parents Brandize and Ryan in Sioux Falls on August 24, 2003. In addition, she has a brother named Declan and a sister named Elijah. Ebeni also loves the color grey because it is her “comfort color.”
Ebeni would describe the last year of her life as a crockpot roast because “you just shove whatever in there with the meat, let it sit on low, and come back and enjoy what it turned into, sometimes good and sometimes not.” Ebeni tends to take a realistic outlook on most aspects of her life. If she had 5 million dollars she would spend half on her wedding, house, businesses, and retirement, and the other half would be put towards bank CDs to save money for her kids and their futures. However, she does take a humorous approach to the question of what superpower she would most like to have. Self-replication is what she would pick because in her words it “wouldn’t be weird when I talk to myself” and “who else would I trust.”
Ag classes have long been Ebeni’s favorite throughout her years here at Madison High School. She loves it because she can learn in a technical format focusing on skills important to her in the building and repairing field. She has always had a mind for those types of skills and says that making inventive decisions and understanding how material things work comes easy to her. When graduated from high school she plans to put those skills to use and wants to own a small home maintenance business, a line of rentals, a laundry mat, vending machines, and maybe even a hotel. In fact, in ten years she will continue to put those skills to use as she hopes to work on a building project making storage units. Given her great work ethic and technical skills, Ebeni is bound to accomplish anything she sets out to do.