Editor’s Note: Today, The Daily Leader continues publication of area high school valedictorian and salutatorian graduation speeches. The following address is from Bogue Chitto Attendance Center Salutatorian Lauren Wallace.

Good evening family, friends, faculty, staff and fellow classmates. Welcome to the commencement ceremony for the class of 2013. I would like to thank you all for being here tonight and for all you have done to help us get to this point in our lives.

I especially want to say how thankful I am that we have been blessed along the way with teachers who have set good Christian examples and who have taught us much more than book smarts.

I know we all remember how both of our first grade classes would join in Ms. Diane Davis’s classroom every morning and sing “This is the day that the Lord has made” and “Father Abraham.” When we moved up to junior high, we learned how to “shoot a little bull” from the master himself, Mr. Mike Hodges.

In high school, we figured out that Ms. Deborah Smith was not as mean as we had heard she was. However, she changes her mind with the direction of the wind, and your best bet is to just go along with what she says.

Then there is good ole Mr. Wise who never fails to tell students “good morning,” even if it is two o’clock in the afternoon. We have also been blessed to have one of the best men I know as a fourth grade teacher, a vice principal, and now as our principal. Coach Mickey Myers has always been someone we could all look up to and aspire to be like.

Over the past 13 years our class has paved many new trails. We have set school records, excelled in various sports and represented our school well academically. Most recently, we showed that we care about others by donating the most blood of all four county schools and dominating the Transylvania Bowl. The class of 2013 was the first group of kindergarteners to have class in the elementary building and now we will be the last class to graduate in this gymnasium. Now that our high school days have come to an end and we are all about to go our separate ways, I want to wish all of my classmates the best of luck in the future.

As I close, I would like to leave you all with a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that I believe is reflective of the class of 2013: “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”