Chloe Draper won’t graduate from Columbus High School until May, but she has already earned an associate’s degree from East Mississippi Community College.
The senior is one of three students this year who will graduate with an associate’s degree through dual credit, and she hopes to set an example for future students.
“I was happy [after graduating], but my main thing, was I wanted other people to do this as well,” Draper said.
Draper won Columbus Exchange Club’s Youth of the Year Award Thursday during a ceremony at Lion Hills Center. Her CHS classmate Tierra Ledbetter won the club’s Accepting the Challenge of Excellence (ACE) Award, which is given to a student in Lowndes County who has highly achieved despite severe obstacles.
The Exchange Club annually selects an overall winner for each award among winners from individual school districts, both public and private. The seniors must submit essays for judging as part of the contest.
School winners each received $100 and an invitation to attend Thursday’s luncheon. Draper and Ledbetter, as the club’s overall winners, each received $350 and a chance to compete for the regional Exchange Club prize.
Draper started college the summer before her junior year. Her mother said the opportunity of taking college classes for free while in high school was something she couldn’t pass up.
She graduated from EMCC with a 4.0 in criminal justice. Her next step is to major in criminal justice and political science at the University of Mississippi, then attend law school.
“I used to watch all the crime shows as a kid,” Draper said. “Ever since then I just knew I could do that.”
Ledbetter’s essay focused on being “born in sadness.”
Her mother was shot and killed when she was only 10 days old. She was raised by her grandparents, who both passed away on the same day last year from congestive heart failure. She now lives with her godmother, Cassandra Logan.
“People expected me to give up,” she said. “I just wanted to make my parents proud and not be a statistic.”
While in high school, Ledbetter works two food service jobs, at Krispy Kreme and Sonic, and has just completed her first year at EMCC through dual enrollment.
Juggling two jobs, high school and her college classes doesn’t seem difficult to Ledbetter. She said she practices time management and finishes her classwork once it’s assigned. Even with only one day off a week, she said she stays ahead of all her work in both high school and college.
“It’s not as hard as people make it seem,” Ledbetter said.
After she graduates high school, she intends to finish school at EMCC and continue her journey to study sports physical therapy at Mississippi State University or University of Southern Mississippi.
Other school winners for the Youth of the Year included: Kaylan Elliot of Caledonia High School; Anna Minga of Columbus Christian Academy; Mallory Amos of Heritage Academy; Mary Owings of Mississippi School for Math and Science; Knollie Edge of New Hope High School; Hannah Heaton of Victory Christian Academy; and Justice Harris of West Lowndes High School.
School winners for the ACE award were: Madison Johnson of Caledonia High School; Mason Cline of Heritage Academy; Harpreet Singh of MSMS; Alexander Cameron Lee of Victory Christian Academy; and Ariel McCoy of West Lowndes High School.
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