*cue Pomp and Circumstance*

By Grace S

*cue Pomp and Circumstance*

As the school year draws to a close, class ranks have been set and titles have been distributed. The valedictorians for the Senior class of 2019 are Nathaniel Dersom and Zoe Hiss. The salutatorian is Maddy Whitt.

One of the two valedictorians, Nathaniel Dersom, said that when he looks back on everything, “I don’t think I would really change a thing. I have no regrets going out of high school. I feel like I’ve done everything I could have done.” He participated in soccer, National Honor Society, musical, Envirothon, tennis, and football his senior year.

Dersom believes that high school and the courses he has taken to become valedictorian have prepared him for college. He recognizes that being valedictorian is just a title, but that, “You’ll be honing your abilities, your intelligence, your extracurriculars, everything. You’re helping you become strong academically...If you go through that process and fail, you still are strengthened by the process because you tried your hardest.”

His older brother had been valedictorian three years prior, so Dersom felt some pressure to attain it as well. He clarified, “It was positive, it wasn’t bad pressure; it was good pressure.”

Similar to Dersom, Zoe Hiss, who shares the title as well, felt the pressure to achieve valedictorian. She said her family had “three valedictorians, now with me, in our family out of six. So they really set the bar high for me.”

“I did feel a lot of pressure. One of my sisters who got it, she is insanely smart….For her, it just came to her. For me, I have to continue working and sometimes things don’t go my way.” She quipped, “It’s rough, but I made it. I’m still here.”

One thing that would have helped with her journey was managing her disorganization. “I wish I had gotten organized sooner. So this is the end of my year, senior year, and in the beginning I was just so disorganized and that did not help me at all. And with volleyball, basketball, and tennis, you have to manage your time.”

Hiss participated and excelled in volleyball, basketball, and tennis. She stated that high school shouldn’t be spent too distraught over grades, but it can’t be too relaxed either. “I think it’s a really good balance of both, because you can’t be too smart and then not have any friends and not experience that, but you can’t be too social, and then never learn anything.”

Unlike the two valedictorians, salutatorian Maddy Whitt consumed herself with schoolwork and discussed missed opportunities because of it. “I haven’t even really done a lot of volunteer work because I was so exhausted doing homework. It’s mentally taxing to the point where you don’t want to do any extra work.”

She recognized that colleges often look for non-academic activities on applications and voiced her regret. “There’s a lot of things I might have liked, and I didn’t want to try out because I thought I wouldn’t like it...I wish I had been more involved in sports and more club efforts...I kind of missed out on a lot of high school experiences that you don’t get back. I didn’t participate in the musical, I kind of wish I did because it seemed fun.”

She said her parents wouldn’t have been disappointed in her if she didn’t get salutatorian. “I think the pressure came from me and myself...I had to live up to my own standards.”

Sometimes the self-imposed pressure began to be a lot. “It was good in the end result, but while it happened, it was not very good. It was so much pressure--to the point where I would sometimes break out into tears after finishing my homework. Or I’d get really scared if I did bad on a test.”

She gained a lot from the path she chose. “AP classes teach you a lot of time management skills and willpower ‘cause it’s really hard...but at the end of the day...With college on the line, you’re going to have to do that, or else you’re not going to get your degree...if you’re going to practice that now-where the stakes aren’t as high, you’re going to build the stamina and the skills and abilities to actually put forth that effort for when you need to do it. If you don’t foster those skills now, when will you?”

Dersom, Hiss, and Whitt all have put in countless hours and endless determination to achieve their titles. While that is wonderful, they also all acknowledged how arbitrary it is. What is a true measure of their abilities, is where they go with the knowledge and accomplishments they have attained.

And we can expect big things from these kiddos.