Graduation 2012: New Life Academy friends finish at the top

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Their grade point averages sure aren’t a giveaway, but friends Joelle Kamp and Kaitlyn Hawn say they found success in the classroom in very different ways.

Kamp, New Life Academy’s valedictorian for the class of 2012 with a 4.22 GPA, is a self-described sometimes-procrastinator who simply enjoyed taking challenging courses. Finishing atop her 50-student graduating class, while rewarding, was never a goal, she said.

“Kaitlyn, she definitely put in more time than I did,” Kamp said of her friend, the class salutatorian with the senior class’ second-best GPA.

How much more time? Take a recent Saturday afternoon for example. Kamp said she and some friends called Hawn with an invitation to go see the blockbuster movie “The Avengers.”

Hawn’s scholarly response? “I have to study for AP Stats.”

“I’m like, ‘You can’t find a two-hour window of time to go watch the movie with us?” Kamp said.

Eventually, she said, “we dragged her out.”

In the end, both got results with their considerable smarts, hard work and differing styles: the friends will both speak during New Life Academy's commencement ceremony on Saturday, June 3 at the school’s Woodbury campus. Friends since each were in elementary school at New Life, it is special, both girls said, they will be honored together.

“It feels nice to get something back for all the work we put in,” Hawn said on a recent afternoon, one of the pair’s last handful of schooldays as New Life seniors.

Next year, Kamp will head south, to Washington University in St. Louis, where she said she plans to study pre-medicine. Hawn will attend Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., roughly a half-hour north of Boston.

How do the friends, the top two students in their graduating class, think they’ll be remembered by classmates and teachers?

“A little nerdy, I think,” Kamp said. “And I’m proud of it.”

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