Juniors at King’s Fork High School got some solid advice from four alumni during an event on Wednesday morning.

The annual Junior Day included a number of activities, including the question-and-answer session by alumni Alexis Brueggeman, Dr. Jaleesha Carter, Dr. Lataisia Jones and Shaka Miller.

Brueggeman is a fifth-grade teacher at Hickory Elementary School who finished her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in four years and graduated with no student loan debt.

Jones was recently the first black doctoral graduate from Florida State University’s College of Medicine.

Carter is a doctor of physical therapy at Bon Secours Mary Immaculate Hospital in Newport News.

Miller is the assistant principal at the College and Career Academy at Pruden and is a doctoral candidate at Liberty University.

Four more highly achieving King’s Fork alumni would have been hard to find.

Their advice to their younger Bulldogs was simple: work hard in high school to develop study skills; try to earn college credits while still in high school, and apply for every scholarship possible; know what you want to do, but realize that if you don’t, that’s OK too; and most importantly, don’t get discouraged.

Simply being smart isn’t enough to succeed in college. Many students who do well in high school without much effort find when they arrive at college that they are falling behind. That is because they haven’t developed the study skills that will be needed to master harder material than what they were able to pick up without trying.

According to a National Center for Education Statistics report, 40 percent of students starting at public, four-year institutions took at least one remedial course during their enrollment between 2003 and 2009.

The statistics about college dropouts are well known: about half of all U.S. college students wind up dropping out without attaining a degree. Although much of that can be attributed to the cost of college, there are also some who drop out because they find that they are not successful in their schoolwork.

However, we have every confidence that the juniors at King’s Fork took the word of the alumni to heart and will make moves now to ensure they can succeed after high school.