The NHS Induction night was a huge success for all of the students and staff who attended. “The NHS represents four years of consistent academic success for our students. You know, you look out at our group that’s being honored tonight and we have students from literally all over the world. It seems like nights like tonight, all the social cliques break down and everybody is one big group so I think tonight’s really cool. We’re about academics and to take a night on academic achievements is really important,” Principal Christopher Mastrangelo explained.
“You get to be around some of the most ambitious people in the school and you also get used to having to sit through long ceremonies and write speeches so it’s just good preparation for doing that when you get older. At this time of the year, I’m reminded of the speeches and stuff and I’m just reminded of how much the students here like the teachers so it’s just a nice thing,” Sarah Diamond explained.
When the night began, the advisor Paul Marques, the president Liam Bloom, the mayor Gary Christenson, the superintendent Dr. Ligia Noreiga-Murphy, and Mastrangelo, gave speeches about the National Honors Society (NHS). After the speeches were finished, all new NHS inductees were called up to grab their certificates as well as a copy of the book How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carneige, while a few facts about each of them were being announced.
Then, the old officers and the new officers started a ceremony where they would light candles and pass them to the new advisors which was a way for them to pass on their job and promise to continue the job with pride. Following this all seniors were called up to get their yellow sashes for graduation as well as the book Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss.
After that, all seniors gave their senior tributes which are speeches about the people in their life that are their inspirations or role models, like their parents, siblings, best friends, or maybe even their teachers. Basically giving thanks to people that are the reason that they are the person they are today. They were sweet speeches that touched everyone's hearts.
“Honestly, being in the NHS has been an amazing experience. I got accepted into the NHS in my sophomore year and that was during covid so it was really different having things online, but once it was back to normal it has been an amazing experience. Being around so many other students who are amazing and just so gifted and at the top,” Alyssa Littlejohn stated.
Then some teachers were given teacher of the year awards, mentor of the year, or the new gratitude award and students also talked about how each teacher has made an impact on them. When they were finished, all staff who were tributed by the students received flowers.
Later into the night, there was a surprise for Judy Sullivan, a retired staff member from Malden High, and it was a video with many of her friends saying thank you and wishing her a wealthy retirement and nothing but the best. She was filled with happiness when she won the gratitude award as she went up to say thank you and receive her flowers.
Mastrangelo then gave a speech about how much pride he has in all of the students and also said to always go forward and thrive and he also reminds them to remember to look back every now and then to remember where you started and who was always there for you.
“There’s no rainbow without rain, darkness turns to light, and there’s no triumph without struggle,” Mastrangelo stated.
After the speech was finished, everyone headed to the cafe to see all of the seniors' service projects, while lots of food like cake, cookies, fruits, beverages, and more were being served.
The service projects are basically the members of the NHS working together to make a project to help the community. All members of the NHS have to be involved in a service project in some way. After they finished, they created a poster with pictures, explaining what their project was.
“The service is my favorite part of being in the NHS and how serious and dedicated people are, like they really wanna help and make the community better,” Zineb Laghzaoui stated.
“So this year, my friends and I got multiple parts for this service project. So we raised money for a nonprofit organization and our goal with that was to raise money to support research on progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP for short) which is a very rare neurological disease that progressively makes the muscles weaker and there’s currently no known cause, treatment, or cure. My grandmother was diagnosed with that and recently passed away so the project meant a lot. Another part of our project was that we organized a benefit concert for the residents at forestdale park senior living, and my friends and we performed some piano and sang for the residents there, as a way to show our love of music with the community,” Alyssa Littlejohn explained.
“Our service project was called ‘Play Like a Girl’ and it was a sports clinic for younger girls grades 5-8, so younger kids got to come in, it was two days, and they got to play different sports and got to learn new things,” Ava Conroy said.
When giving advice about what's most important to succeed, Sarah Diamond explained how sleep is one of the most important things. “Sleep is so important because it’s important to try and sleep consistently which is sort of a larger thing because obviously you're not going to be able to completely meet everything you want to do in terms of taking care of yourself all the time, that’s just never going to happen even if you specifically try to make it happen. But just try and take care of the bare minimum and this will carry over to how you deal with your work because if you don’t take care of yourself, it’s going to show up in your work. So obviously do your work but also remember to take care of yourself because then when something like covid happens, you don’t crash and burn.”
Overall, everyone had a great night of honoring the students in the NHS and celebrating their academic achievements.
“Continue to challenge yourself and find yourself and always remember there’s nothing you can’t do,” Mastrangelo said.
