“A life lesson that has been important to me is never take things for granted,” senior Zackary Hodges said. “It may be there one day, and the next day it will be gone.” 

“I think about my mom, she would come home, do the dishes, clean the house, and do laundry,” Hodges said. “I guess I took those things for granted because I never had to do them and one day she up and left.”

  I’ve been working here for 36 years.  Some of my most memorable experiences are helping a lot of the kids out, keeping them out of trouble, and talking to them. One student was Bobby Jackson. He was in trouble a lot, so I took him under my lead, and told him “you gotta listen to what the teacher says,” and so he did. Then I used to have a little program in the evening for him. We played basketball til 6 o clock, and after that he was good and finished school.

It’s hard to keep them straight.  They don't like to listen, but I stay on them. I’ve got a whole lot that get along with me, and do what I tell them and stuff.

I work with Cody in Ms. Pullen’s room.  I keep him pretty straight.

I just talk to him, tell him he needs to settle down, or cool down, cause he’s got a little attitude sometimes.  But you gotta have good communication with them too. Somebody’s gotta look out for them.

“Crying doesn't help anything. Since I always cried, my dad told me crying doesn't help with anything- since it really doesn’t, you just have to deal with the problem."

“I cried a lot growing up and I always went to my dad or mom, and they just always told me crying solves nothing. So stop crying and grow up. Comfort is what solves problems, not crying.”

Think before you act.

My dad has done more than he should. Right now while I'm putting my feet on the ground he's already bought me a car and set me up with a job and a free place to live. 

I've been working at home for my dad in HVAC. For 6 years I've been volunteering and my dad is helping me in life and giving me a job in HVAC. It’s a good job but the hardest part is going into hot attics in the summertime. 

A challenge that I've overcome is my speech impediment. I used to kind of be sensitive about it but now I joke around about it.

I'll tell you this one story; I was sitting in my turf crew class and the field was in shambles. I'm sitting on the lawn mower and I'm thinking about how to make everyone laugh. I ask everyone, do you guys know what a lawn mow mow mow mow mower sounds like? It made everyone laugh. 

I like to be the funny supportive guy even when heavy things are around us. I try to pass that on to others and show them that not everything is solved with anger and hate. 

 “At the beginning of my high school career I was really unhealthy,” said Thompson. “ Actually in ninth grade year I wasn’t allowed to do track or anything at all. Lily[Lillian Liles] inspires me to succeed, she’s one of the girls on the team. She’s great, I love her. She’s one of the people that will push you on the team.” 

  “It’s a really close like family type environment there,” Thompson said. “And they make you feel comfortable, and regardless of how you do they make sure that at the end of your race you feel good about it.”

“Some important life lessons I have learned is that being honest is hugely important, and being respectful to people in general,” Director of guidance Todd Ryan said. “I don't know if it’s a work ethic but it is something important to work at. Everyone has a story to tell and I think it’s important to just sit and listen.”

“If I could teach anyone anything it would be just that inherently people are good,” Ryan said. “Give people the benefit of the doubt and recognize that everyone will make mistakes and have different opinions and viewpoints on life. If you disagree with somebody that's okay, it's what makes people unique.”

“I think it’s important to not let anyone push you around, people take advantage of amazing and fun personalities and I think it’s important to cut those people off because of that.

“I want to be in med school and learn how to help people and I’m either doing dermatology or psychology. I had a dermatologist look at my skin and knew exactly what was wrong with it and I think that’s really cool.”

“A life lesson I learned is that sometimes you have to do things on your own and you can’t rely on other people for help or else you become dependent on them and you don’t know how to fix your own problems,” sophomore Macenzie Wallace said.

“I kept relying on people for help instead of trying to figure things out on my own and ended up not being able to do things by myself.”

“So when I was in the eighth grade, we had to take four languages. We had to take nine weeks of Latin, Spanish, French and German. I was dating a guy who was in 10th grade. So he was in high school, I was in middle school, and I was like, Oh my gosh, I want to take French. I love it. He's like the French teacher is so mean. You should take Spanish so that's why I took Spanish. And I wonder if he hadn’t said that, like, would I be a French teacher or what would I be doing today?”

“An important lesson that I’ve learned from life is that communication is really important because talking things out is what gets you through life.  Along with communication, being on time for things is another important life lesson that I’ve learned and they’re both something that I'd want to pass on.”

My mom has had the biggest impact on me growing up. She has worked so hard to be where she is and she never gave up.  When my parents got divorced, my mom did everything in her power to make sure she could support the things that we wanted to do. She moved us down from New Jersey to Virginia so she could make sure that we got the opportunities we wanted.

“Two life lessons I would say are relationships and communication. I think they sort of go hand in hand with one another. In order to have a good relationship with someone, you have to be able to communicate with them through the good and the bad, the good and the tough. I would say my greatest success and I hope it continues to be my greatest success are my two kids. I have a little boy, a little girl, they're everything and they're my world. I think my legacy will be whatever they accomplish and being able to spend time with them and have them grow up and influence them to live a very productive, healthy, happy life is basically what I see as my greatest accomplishment.”

“A quote that I live by is that some things don’t matter. If you think about it, you waste a lot of time doing things like losing energy or losing sleep or losing brain space, your mind space because that's what naturally happens.  If you focus on what you want to do, then you'll find out that you'll be generally happier across the board. Focusing on what other people want you to do in terms of having a job or going to school will overwhelm you for no reason.”

“I usually let other people's opinions or comparisons get the best of me when I am more than capable of achieving my goals.  One goal in my life is I want to be a large animal vet when I grow up.  Animals and animal anatomy really interest me and I just enjoy working with them.”