Student voices
In their own words, Jefferson Twp. High School’s valedictorian and salutatorian reflect on their time at the school:
As salutatorian for the of Class of 2018, I challenge all graduates of 2018 to take your dreams and set goals, take those goals, act on them, don’t be afraid to make mistakes, and most importantly, when you make mistakes don’t run from them. Use them as stepping stones to your future. Every person has made mistakes and every person has wanted to give up, but giving up will leave you at the starting line while the lives of everyone around you are still moving towards the finish line. Every person has the ability to rise and overcome where we are now. Most circumstances are only temporary, but if you give up it will only lead to failure. Nothing beats a failure but a try. I like to think that is an important quote to live by and take with us throughout our lives.
There will be times when people try to crush your dreams, when people’s constructive criticism won’t be so constructive, when you need someone and there will be nobody there. Many things will turn you away from your goals, but take those negative circumstances and use them as motivation. Why limit yourself when you have so much potential? You’ve never heard of a successful person who gave up or quit after their discouraging endeavors, but you do hear of successful people who keep pushing even when all odds are against them. Good luck Class of 2018 and thanks for being the best class.
Looking back over my time in high school, I realized that, as a student, one thing that we seem to hear a lot is that “life is hard,” and while that may be true, I think we say anything that causes the slightest inconvenience is considered hard too. For example, that time when you try to study for that final that’s worth half your grade, but the material is just not clicking and you are starting to get a little panicky. As you can see, many days, there are things that can get a little hard in life, but you have to take action. Once you finish that initial task, and take the first step, it suddenly gets a lot easier to handle because you figured out where to begin.
Once you figure out where to begin, then you can start to think outside of the box and you begin to realize that all those things that seemed like “detrimental problems” are more like little inconveniences. Those academic hardships you saw are times that you just needed more motivation to get over the barrier. Those petty little fights that you had with your friends were merely just bouts of miscommunication. As the Class of 2018 takes the next steps on their journeys, let’s commit to taking wise action toward reaching our goals and working to overcome barriers.