Chavis pleasantly surprised to achieve honor
John I. Leonard valedictorian Connor Chavis had a high-ranking GPA for most of his high school career, but he wasn’t sure he would land at the top of his senior class. So when he got the news, Chavis said he was pleasantly surprised.
“It makes me feel good because it is something that makes my dad (Danny Chavis) happy,” Connor Chavis said. “It’s something he’s always wanted for me.”
The hard work paid off, but finding a quiet place to study wasn’t always easy. Chavis said sharing a room with his brothers could be challenging.
“I have three brothers. Two of them are adopted,” he said. “One is off in college right now and the other is a junior. I have shared rooms with them, and it’s hard getting work done in a busy room.”
Chavis, 17, who lives in
Greenacres, has a 3.96 GPA and 5.23 HPA. He is taking Advanced Placement calculus and student government this year. Chavis also is taking Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education Computer Science, travel tourism and marine science courses. He is a member of the National Honor Society and the varsity basketball team.
Chavis said he’s learned life lessons by being involved in sports.
“Sports are fun, but you meet so many people through doing sports,” he said. “It always gives you somebody you can go to talk to and you get close friends through sports.”
Chavis said he will be attending the University of Florida and plans on majoring in computer engineering. His ultimate goal is to design video games.
“I want to start off by working for a company like Google or Apple or maybe a video game company,” he said.
Chavis said he thinks the biggest lesson he’s learned on his way to becoming valedictorian is keep moving forward even when things get hard.
“Not everything is easy because sometimes your work in class and (things) are easy and then you’ll hit a stump and you want to give up,” he said. “But you can’t give up because some things are going to be hard.”
Chavis said the school’s superlatives are bigger than academics in his eyes because interaction between people is collective, and achieving academic success can be done on a more individualized basis.
Chavis said his advice to peers is no matter how crazy an idea may sound, pursue it if it’s something you really want to do.
“You should still try to do something because you don’t know if you can actually do it until you fail,” he said. “Instead of chasing what you know you can do, you should chase what you don’t know you can do.”