SAN BENITO — What are the top two students of San Benito High School going to do with their time now that school is coming to an end?
Sleep.
Once the last class bell rings, valedictorian Lindsey Gore and salutatorian Joseph Munoz are planning to use the summer before they head off to college to get some well-deserved rest.
“I feel relieved because I know I got to where I needed to be,” Lindsey said.
She never planned to be valedictorian, but her interest in school and her focus led her to that top spot.
“It was deciding, ‘Oh, do I want to go out with my friends tonight or should I probably finish this project?’” Lindsey said. “It wasn’t necessarily studying a whole lot, but it was studying when I felt like I needed to.”
Hoping to become an anesthesiologist, Lindsey will start her college career as an Aggie at Texas A&M University.
Joseph is on a similar path to medicine.
He will be studying biology at the University of Texas at Austin where he is looking forward to its diverse culture.
“Coming from the Valley, there’s not much to do and not much of a variety of people,” Joseph said. “I’m really interested in getting involved up there because it’s so big.”
Joseph said he wanted to do his best for his mother and get into a good college with scholarship opportunities to help pay for school.
“She always encouraged us to do the best in school and always try for that,” Joseph said. “She might not have known it but I really tried to be at the top of my class and get scholarships and help her out money-wise.”
Both Lindsey and Joseph agreed the biggest reason for them being at the top was because they kept their priorities straight and made necessary sacrifices.
Saying no to going out to the movies or being involved in activities that took too much time away from studying were part of what put them at the top.
“For me it was hard trying to balance the organizations while maintaining the grades in the class, but I had to persevere through that and make class work my priority,” Joseph said.
