21 seniors making plans for early graduation

By: Annebeth Ahrenholz

As the fall semester of 2015 comes to a close, many things are ending, but for some seniors, that includes their high school careers.

Each year, Cedar Falls has a number of students that decide to graduate early. This year’s numbers aren’t extremely high, but there are 21 seniors who are deciding to graduate this January. These students include Chase Ager, Ameen Bridges, Gabe Chestnut, Kelcie Scott, Carissa Wordel, Kade Berry, Zach Buss, Andrew Edgeton, Austin Edgeton, Rawley Ficklin, Megan Gardner, Majda Hasic, Taylor Hylton, Destiny Kelley, Sadie Kolpek, Duong Nguyen, Michael Pfalzgraf, Madison Pitzenberger, Autumn Saul, Ashley Sires and Marley Weaver.

All of these students have their own personal reasons for early graduation. Weaver decided to graduate early because she is moving to Colorado in a couple months. “I really wanted to work a lot until I moved. I have the option of going to Colorado at basically any time after I graduate, so once I found out that I only needed seven credits to graduate, I set up my schedule right away so I could be done by second semester.”

Weaver plans on being an art teacher. “I have always planned on graduating early so that I could move to Colorado. I never had a plan at first when I decided that I wanted to go there. My first plan was to go to Colorado School of Arts, and get my degree there, but focus more on energy healing,” she said.

After doing a college visit, she fell in love with it, but then this semester after taking beginning painting and advanced drawing, she realized she wanted art in her future, so she now plans on going to art school in Colorado Springs.

Weaver’s favorite memory from high school was homecoming week of senior year. “Just the way that everyone gets excited for it makes me happy, especially seeing people in my class this year since we’re all seniors now, and, of course, the football games and finally being able to sit in the front with my senior class,” she said.

Saul is graduating early because she had enough credits and wants to work full time at Applebee’s and become a server. She is starting at Capri College in August. “I’ll have the whole summer to have fun and not worry about anything,” she said.

Her favorite high school memories include the people. “It’s going to be sad not seeing my friends every day because after high school, you really do lose touch with a lot of friends,” Saul said. She plans to visit some people a lot second semester.