Senior Tonese Woods is one of the 28 seniors who will graduate this December. Woods says she chose to graduate early because she didn’t think she had any reason to stay at LN any longer.

“I feel like I completed school and did everything I needed to do to graduate. I don’t feel like I need to be here longer than what I need to be,” Woods said.

LN Registrar Bonnie Akers tells why she thinks that some students choose to graduate a semester early.

“From what I have seen, [students] want to start college early, or they work for a semester to save up money for college. I honestly think that they need to spend all of their whole senior year to experience senior life, but some just don’t have a choice, they have to work,” Akers said.

The last day of high school for students who are graduating early is Dec. 19, while most seniors will be graduating on June 11. Woods tells about her plans for the spring semester as a high school graduate and whether graduating early presented any challenges.

“Spring semester I will be saving up money working and I’m probably going to get ready to go to the Air Force to pay for college. I already know what college I’m going to. It’s really not hard at all. I just made sure I took the classes that I needed to take and I didn’t fail any classes. I ended up with plenty of credits,” Woods said.

Senior Austin Mallette is another student who plans on graduating early. Mallette says that she decided to graduate early so that she could work, and explains how hard it was to be able to graduate early.

“I was going to take classes, but I thought I would just work full-time and take a little break from school. I had to take all the classes that I had to take during the year in one semester, so I had to take Econ, Government, World Lit. and Comp. all at the same time. But it’s not too hard,” Mallette said.

Akers explains what a student would need to do if they wanted to graduate a semester early and how many early graduates LN usually has per year.

“Normally you guys end up with more than enough credits to graduate, but they still have to meet the same criteria, pass the ECA and obtain a Core 40 Diploma. As long as they do that, there’s really not any extra work. Normally there’s anywhere from 25-35 students, I think this year we have about 25 that are graduating in December,” Akers said.

Mallette says that she would only recommend graduating early to an underclassmen if they stay on top of their schoolwork and if they have a good reason to graduate early.

“If you’re just going to be lazy and sleep for a semester and not do anything then no, but if you’re going to actually do something and take classes at Ivy Tech or something like that, then yeah, I would recommend it,” Mallette said.