BETHEL — “Make the choice to become lifelong learners. It cannot and must not happen just in the classroom,” valedictorian and summa cum laude student Jamie Steven told the Telstar Regional High School graduates at Friday night’s commencement.

Sixty-four students received their diplomas from Principal Daniel Hart in the outdoor ceremony. And 38 of those students received $772,000 in scholarships, Hart said.

Some 49 percent of the class will continue their education in a college setting while seven will enter the job market and five are still deciding their future plans.

The students marched out to the field shortly before 7 p.m. to the formal processional “Pomp and Circumstance.”

Third honors, cum laude student Emily DeCarolis, told classmates and families and friends that she both loved and hated her high school years, but she is always looking to the future and seeing better times.

“What we have now is an opportunity,” she said, adding that students should take the “best” of their school years with them into the future.

Salutatorian and magna cum laude student and class Co-president Elek Pew talked about entering the world as a “one-man wolf pack,” but how that pack grew over the years.

“I believe we are all ready to leave the wolf pack” he said. “Believe in your own convictions,” he said.

Steven, who also served as co-president of the Class of 2011, challenged classmates to accept continual change and to continually seek education. “It is essential if we ever move forward in life,” she said.

Seniors Sarah Averill, Victoria Forkus and Zachery Palmer gave the class reflections from the three elementary schools, middle school and high school they attended. She remembered such things as dinosaur pillows, rug burns, the alphabet soup song, the dance-athon, getting lost going to Canobie Lake Park and monkey bars.

The students sang a choral selection, “Welcome to Wherever You Are,” by Bon Jovi before listening to congratulatory remarks by chairman of the school board Sidney Pew. He referenced Dr. Seuss and told the students to “do a lot of spitting out of hot air and be careful what you swallow.”

Superintendent David Murphy certified the graduates just before Hart presented the diplomas.

ldixon@sunjournal.com