Good evening friends, family, faculty and fellow graduates. Today, the student body stands before you on the edge of their past and future. We began high school four years ago as children, and are leaving here today to truly begin our lives as young adults in this society. Some of us will go to college, travel the world or start our own businesses. It’s no longer some distant reality. Today, we begin our own pathways into the real world.
[private] When 1 first sat down to write this speech, I had absolutely no idea what I could say to this community and class about what high school really is and what we’ve learned from it, and after hours and hours of contemplation I realized that there really is nothing I can say to summarize what high school has been for all of us collectively. I can tell you that we’ve all created memories, and that we’ve learned from our hardships, and while that’s all true, high school isn’t some experience that can be generalized for an entire student class by just another girl who wrote some words on two pieces of paper. During the past four years no student has undergone the same experience. We took the same classes, played on the same teams, and performed at the same concerts, but those circumstances, the individual lessons we learned and emotions we felt, impacted us in entirely different manners. It hasn’t all just been another four years of our lives. The moral choices we’ve all made, and accomplishments we’ve achieved aren’t going to define what we become in the future as a graduating class. It is what we have chosen to make out of those defining experiences that has made high school so different for each and every one of us, and has truly shaped us into the people we are today and the people we may become twenty years from now.
Although I don’t believe I can stand before you all and recite what high school has taught ALL of us, 1 can certainly tell you what it has taught me. I learned how to depend on myself: to complete work on my own agenda, take responsibility for the choices and decisions I make, and put everything I can into the things I love to do. I learned to consider and understand the position of others when presented with particular situations, but to always do what I believe is best for myself and those around me. Without the faculty and administration who have taught me both educational and life lessons, my mother who has supported me in everything I do, and my father who has shown me what true hard work and passion are, I can honestly say I wouldn’t have learned half of what I have throughout high school.
I remember when I was in kindergarten and my teacher asked all of us what we thought we wanted to be when we grew up. Kids drew pictures of themselves as singers, dancers, basketball players, and all sorts of unattainable professions like unicorns and butterflies. We’d all play “pretend” games on the playground, write letters to Santa Claus, and have our daily nap time. Looking back, it’s amazing to see how active our imaginations once were. We all were so passionate about the holiday figures we believed in, and dreamt of becoming the most incredible people every day. Growing up, going to high school, people lose that imagination, that endless realm of possibilities that they can experience. Of course we aren’t going to meet Santa Claus someday or wake up and be a butterfly, but beginning today, we do have the world at our fingertips. We have the power to explore our most outrageous interests and become anybody that we want to be. Chasing those dreams and delving into whatever our passions may be is what makes life worth living. And today Class of 2015, we begin living. Thank You.