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Hazel Floyd considers it a “massive honor” to have been chosen as the 2022 Valley High School salutatorian.

“I’m so thankful,” she said. “I’ve worked so hard for the past four years, and I’m glad that it finally paid off.”

Floyd said she’s always been a high-achieving student academically.

“I have a natural drive to want to be successful,” she said. “I don’t like not being busy.”

A central part of Floyd’s personality is her love of people. She said her most positive experience at Valley High School has been hanging out with friends. She plans to apply her love of people to her future career.

Floyd said she’s dual-enrolled at Southern Union State Community College. After she graduates from high school, she plans to get an associate’s degree, probably in general studies, from Southern Union before transferring somewhere else to get a political science degree. Floyd wants to eventually transfer into law school.

“I love people, and I love helping people,” she said. “And since I want to be a lawyer, I feel like political science is a great door opener for law school. And once I get into law school and become a lawyer, I may either start my own law firm or go into government.”

Floyd considers her greatest achievement at Valley High School to be the fact that she’s been the club leader for multiple organizations. She’s been the president of Key Club, the president of Mu Alpha Theta, the president of the National Honor Society and the vice president of Beta Club. Floyd said she was also in the Scholars’ Bowl, marching band, concert band, yearbook team and was a Junior Ambassador for the Greater Valley Area Chamber of Commerce.

An obstacle Floyd has encountered at Valley High School is time management.

“Since I do dual enrollment and I’m a Valley High School student, I find it hard to balance all the clubs I partake in with college classes and a normal seven-period schedule,” she said.

Floyd would tell new students coming to Valley High School that making good connections with people and starting off with good grades are the best ways to remain successful throughout all four years of high school. As for what she’d tell current students, she said it’s important to have fun and live life a little.

“School is not always just work, work, work,” she said.

Floyd is particularly fond of band director Kitty Deloach and assistant band director Mark Meadows, who she says have both shaped her into the person she is today.

If Floyd could change one thing about the world, she would have people be more open-minded.

Floyd said she was born and raised in Valley.