On June 20th 2016, the AHS seniors said their final farewell to their high school days and welcomed a new chapter to their lives. As tradition has it, graduation was held in DAR Constitution Hall. The anticipated day started off with a speech from Senior executive board member Rebecca Soulen following with one also from the class of 2016 president Ashley Britton. Both graduates reminisced memories of their Annandale days and give a brief goodbye speech to their fellow classmates. Unlike in previous years, the guest speaker was someone almost every Fairfax county student knows, school board member Ryan McElveen. McElveen gave the graduates a piece of advice on how to handle failure and rejection as he did in his previous years before becoming who he is. He began his speech with a few jokes and ended it with three scenarios of how he had encountered downfalls in his life, reminding the graduates that they will fail in the real world but have to push through. As the night went along, students were recognized for their dedication to join the military and awards were handed out such as the citizenship award. “Getting the citizenship award was a good surprise, I remember walking up to the stage and looking over at Tim Johnson and giving him a look like “what’s happening,” It was crazy how only three people got the award but I was really honored it was a good way to end high school,” senior Hannah Shartel said.

Once the final speeches all but two were done, the graduates were called up one by one to obtain their diploma.

“It’s an indescribable feeling to final get my diploma, It’s so crazy to think that I have worked for this day since elementary school. I feel blessed, my hard work really did pay off!” senior Ruth Tigub said.

The ceremony ended with two speeches, a brief one by Principal Thomas simple saying ‘seniors, you’ve made it,’ and another one by class of 2016 Vice President Seham Ahmed, who gave his class their last high school speech.

“It was a bittersweet moment when the end came. I wanted high school to be over since freshmen year but now I don’t want it to end. I’m probably not going to see or speak to about 90% of these people again. But like Dr. Seuss said don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened and that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” senior Dianna Agyeman said. However their night did not end there, Seniors went to Audrey Moore Recreation Center to continue their graduation all night. Congratulations class of 2016.