Every year, Dimond staff members plan an evening ceremony in the Auditoria to honor the academic accomplishments of Dimond’s finest seniors. This year, the event will be at 6:00 pm on Apr. 12.

Parents and teachers are invited to the event to celebrate their students’ achievements. A select group of teachers voted on by the students get to read off student bios, while parents of each student hug, put the cord around their kid’s neck and take pictures with them on stage.

The Class of 2018 broke the previous number of honors grads Dimond has ever had, with 115 seniors earning a cumulative GPA of 3.5 and above and 31 students within the 115 earning above a 4.0 GPA.

There are only 387 students within the Class of 2018, meaning that almost a third of the graduating class worked hard throughout high school to earn the distinction of honors at graduation.

Lea Bouton, a chemistry teacher and NHS advisor at Dimond, discussed the increasing amount of Honor Grads, and whether or not this trend is here to stay.

“To me, [the growing number of honor grads] looks like a trend that is going to continue, and it’s certainly new considering the Class of 2017 only had 77 honor grads, so it was a large jump. For the Class of 2019, their class is considerably smaller than 2018’s, but porportionally they have the same amount of honor grads and summa cum laude’s as the Class of 2018. In the past years, there has been around 70 to 80 honor graduates, and I am pleased to see that kids are raising the bar academically,” Bouton said.

Bouton also raised concerned about making sure students are well balanced all around, and are taking care of themselves and their community.

“We want to make sure that students are taking care of themselves health wise, so apart of me worries about students not being balanced completly when they are so heavily focused on school. Teachers and [Dimond] are responsible for making sure that our honor grads are going to not only be great students academically, but also be great people towards their families and community for the rest of their lives. Honor grads are the leaders in this school, and so far they have done a good job balancing both,” Bouton said.

Senior Jack Jeong is looking forward to hearing some of his favorite teachers speak at the ceremony.

“I hope that the teachers that I voted for, like Mr. Keller and Mr. Basset, end up being speakers at the ceremony. They are my favorite teachers that I have had at Dimond, and it would make my day,” Jeong said.

Senior Tyler Jang, who is the valedictorian of the Class of 2018, stated how much work he put into school to be number one in the entire class.

“I wasn’t here freshman year so I didn’t know about [Honor Grad night] till last year. I’ve always tried to do my best in school and take advantage of my academic opportunities. I was really ambitious the past two years with my AP course load, and I’m glad it paid off,” Jang said.

Senior Isaac Villeda stressed the importance of doing well in high school during freshman and sophomore year, so students do not have to scramble during junior year and first semester of senior year to get a 3.5 GPA.

“Being an honor grad is a long term goal I set when I was a freshman, and long term goals are important to me because then I will continue to have a drive to complete them. I recommend checking Zangle [Q] as much as you can just so you know what classes you need to stay focused on and what you need to improve on,” Villeda said.

For most students, Honor Grad night is a night to recognize the last four years of effort and sacrifice that hard working seniors have put in.