Commencement Address 2011
University High School
Thanks, Tom. Thank you to the graduating class of 2011 for giving me the honor of speaking to you today. Today I would like to speak on a subject that I hope will be remembered by the graduates of 2011 at least until they reach their first graduation party this afternoon.
One of the great things about speeches is that by their very nature, with a handful of exceptions such as the Gettysburg Address or King's speech to the March on Washington, they are events that devote all of their craft and pomp and ceremony to being quickly and entirely forgotten. In her commencement address to Harvard University, J. K. Rowling said that she thought back to her own graduation ceremony, at which the speaker was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. "Reflecting on her speech," Rowling said, "has helped me enormously in writing this one, because as it turns out I can't remember a single word she said." It's incredibly liberating when you know that whenever someone is asked about what happened at graduation, unless a speaker was to spontaneously combust or suddenly shout, "A CRIME is happening" and tear open his shirt and fly through the roof, most of you will later recall the spray tan you got this morning before you could recite any part of a graduation speech.
At this point I've forgotten what I was going to talk about. (Flip through notes). Here we go. The topic that, as I've mentioned, I'm sure you will all commit to long term memory is... the art of being absent minded. I want to say that I am not speaking as an expert on this subject, but as a fellow traveler, someone humbled by absent mindedness who is simply offering a few thoughts that, should you ever ask me about them later, I will not remember having had or spoken.
Actually, absent mindedness comes in more than one form. It is not necessarily a curse of old age, or a brand of ignorance or stupidity. One of the most important Buddhist teachers of the past century, a man named Tich Nat Hanh, said, "If I show you a cup full of water and ask you if it is empty, then you will say, ‘No, it is full.' If I were to pour the water out of the cup and then ask you again, you would say, ‘Yes, now the cup is empty.' But empty of what? Not of air. In order for something to be empty it has to be empty of something. It is possible to be empty of one thing, but full of everything else in the cosmos."
The Hebrew Bible contains the saying, "My cup runneth over," in reference to experiencing the joy of having more than one needs. Whether spiritual paths use metaphors of emptiness or fullness, I think they are all addressing the same idea, and this idea is one fundamental to an advanced education. It is the idea of openness, of making room in the mind.
You are about to go to college. You will never again experience anything else like it. College is not mandatory. There is no truancy from it. It does not follow an all-day schedule. It is designed for thinkers as an institution to provide you with what is called "higher learning," and at its heart-perhaps its most important asset but one that is seldom ever discussed-is a commodity that you must learn to appreciate as much as you appreciate anything else in your life: free time.
It's important to know that we should never denigrate hard work and achievement in the name of laziness or absenteeism. That is not the brand of absent mindedness I am advocating today. Being unselectively forgetful as a way of simply dodging responsibility is also not what I would ever encourage as a teacher, or as someone who today feels more like an uncle or brother to you as you move from being students in a school to students by practice, by choice. In fact, your achievements are what put you in the various colleges and universities that have accepted and invested in you.
The absent mindedness I am talking about is of a kind that is capable of letting go, of emptying itself of something in particular. It is able to be singular in focus, capable of both depth and scope, but marching ultimately to the beat of its own drummer. This practice doesn't result in work not being accomplished, but may instead find you emerging from a library after hours have passed that you didn't count, or occupying a profound silence as if it were your home. And that is where great ideas are often had. Losing track of time is a characteristic of absent mindedness, and might just distinguish you from the person who is utterly constrained by the clock, enslaved by the work day, bound to the multi-tasking and firefighting that all but rule the American sense of a work ethic. Henry David Thoreau said, "Time is but a stream I go a'fishin' in." One proof we have that he wasn't championing a mere idleness that produced nothing but wasted time, is that a significant portion of us still know who Henry David Thoreau is. It's tough to find a list of people known for their accomplishments and contributions because they were perpetually distracted. Curious, yes. Inquisitive, certainly. But led around by the crowd chanting "more is better," not so much.
You cannot save time. You cannot manage time. Time preceded us and will continue after us. The centuries have brought us progress in many forms, but what masquerades as progress is the way we have convinced ourselves to cut up time into smaller and smaller increments until we can no longer pay attention to something beyond a first impression. Beware the kind of knowledge that preys on the discontent and materialism of a mass culture trained to be unhappy with what is not immediate and simultaneous and expensive. I know someone who said that her children have a hard time sticking with a television show all the way through to the end. This strikes me as ironic, because when I sat in the gymnasium at my high school commencement, the scholars of social media were conducting studies on the short attention spans of people who watched too much TV.
The absent mindedness that makes you dependent upon three different forms of media feeding you tiny little forgettable pieces of information at the same time is not the absent-mindedness I am encouraging today. You are the realized generation of the Information Age, its sons and daughters, and you may become its casualties. The turn of this century has happened. Its inaugural decade is over. We had a "me" generation. You are the i-Generation, and you have been branded by all that is temporary, fleeting, upgraded, and robbed of its longevity.
Steve Jobs will tell you that he has discovered the philosopher's stone and solved the problems of the known universe every time he loads a few apps and another iWord onto a phone and sells it back to you. Obsolescence is not the emptiness I would wish for you to seek. Your wisdom, your higher learning, might be better gauged by your paying attention to what actually improves the quality of your life rather than buying every single gizmo that promises to do so.
A couple of students in my Place in Literature class reminded me of the importance of this in a presentation they gave on the movie Castaway. You may know this movie. I'll give you the basic plot: Stranded... on a desert island... for four years. What the students chose to emphasize in their presentation was the way that the main character of the movie is a Fed Ex manager fixated on the clock. His job has so influenced his state of mind, his way of being, that he has adopted a kind of lunatic genius pep talk about the oppressive and enslaving clock that measures the success or failure of package delivery, and therefore finally governs the success or failure of nations.
Then he winds up stranded on an island, for about as long as it takes to earn a degree, and time asserts itself for what it is, breaking the fragile glass of his type-A, obsessive compulsive, anxiety driven life, and recalibrating his mind by stripping him of everything he thought was important to be replaced with the fundamentals of survival and existence. I don't wish for you do endure that kind of hardship in order to become absent minded. There are easier ways to empty your cup.
I had a friend who was in the Peace Corps in the Seychelles Islands. He told me that the culture shock he felt when he came back to the Unites States was far greater than what he felt when he went to the islands. He said, "I found myself standing in a grocery store, totally overwhelmed by how many kinds of shampoo there were to choose from. In the Seychelles we had two kinds of shampoo-green and red-and they were the same shampoo, just died two different colors for variety. Why would anyone invent another shampoo? Aren't there better ideas to be had out there?
There are risks to being absent minded. Sometimes you'll forget something you should have remembered. Sometimes you'll be later than you intended to be, or mess up the directions, or get a little lost. Sometimes someone else will have to pick up the ball for you, and you'll owe them one. These are risks that do not sit well at all with the type-A, schedule-driven, clock obsessed culture that does a great job at a certain kind of system and so pretends that such a system is the only one worth employing. And you will be punished for your absent-mindedness sometimes, written off as less intelligent than people thought you were, or seen as odd, behind the times, out of touch, lazy, irresponsible, uncooperative, anachronistic, senile, or affected. These are the traits that most of us think of when we think of someone being absent minded.
However, it might not be the lack of a highly developed consciousness that makes a cat sit like a sphinx at the center of a rug, lower its eyelids a little, and stare into the ancient abyss for hours. It might not be stupidity that makes a bear hibernate, or an elk stand in a cool stream and chew its cud for a whole afternoon. You know what? That might be the height of wisdom. An elk is part of a mammalian group called "ruminants." The name ruminant, for the animals that chew their cud, comes from the same Latin root for the word we use to indicate that we're pondering or meditating on something, to ruminate, which means "to chew again." Time spent without language, text, noise, and the maintenance of all one accumulates in a life, is cleansing. To focus on what makes you stronger isn't necessarily to follow what makes you more immediately happy nor what pressures you to be perfect. Doing well at what is in front of you is important.
The great achievements you collect as an individual will not be measured by someone calling your name or handing you an award. They cannot be measured by a number. Those are consequences of achievement. The fraternity of evil has as long a list of dignitaries with high degrees as the society of good. Your achievements will be truly measured by the health and peace they bring to your life and to others. Your accomplishments have to be held in the still water of letting go of the stress and anxiety that affects your clarity and growth, your wisdom and serenity, your focus and progress. This is what it is to be a student, and you should never consider yourself to have graduated away from that role.
In one of my favorite books, Alice in Wonderland, Alice comes to a fork in the road where the Cheshire cat sits in a tree, smiling down at her.
"Which one do I take?" she asks.
"Where do you want to go?" asks the cat.
Alice answers, "I don't know."
The cat says, "Then it doesn't matter."
The way you feel right now, the celebration inside you that's making you pay almost no attention to anything happening here today... that feeling is the result of what you've done right, not what you've done wrong. It's a fantastic unbalancing combination of loss and wonder, pioneering and reminiscing, connection to the people you've known here for these few years, and movement toward the community of collegiate scholars you will now join.
You've been taught well here, even by Mr. FitzGibbon, and now you've graduated, and you are ready for college... You're ready. What will you choose to do with your mind? What will you allow to have influence over it? When will you let it be at rest, at peace?
Four years from now, when you walk across another stage, and you have on a cap and gown that make you look just like everyone else around you, you will know under that cap that you are not everyone else around you, and they will know it, too. You'll know it by the thoughts you had that belonged to you, by what you shaped and created by your own hand, and by how you emptied your mind of whatever poisoned it, and filled it with what was pure.
Leave here today with hope. Don't give in to a sense of an uncontrollable future of buffeting winds and economic trouble and the ultimate confusion that comes from having no purpose and no firm ground on which to stand. Have a goal, but have a party. Be safe, but jump. Stop working so hard on how hard you're supposed to be working. Just do the most important thing that's right there in front of you. The scoreboard will take care of itself.
I'm proud of you. I know that my colleagues, your teachers and school administrators, are proud of you. You know that your parents are proud and that they love you. Thank them. They've sacrificed as much as you have for this education. But more importantly, share your excitement with them, your joy. You won't know for a while how much that means to them, but you'll know someday, and you can't go back. Let them in on your happiness. Your achievements as students have already done a lot of good for the people around you in this room. I'm excited for you, for the incredible explosion of new knowledge that you're about to experience. Make room for it. Prepare a place in your mind for it. Try walking through the world, at least from time to time, in a state of absent mindedness, so that you might more frequently and better come to know something we experience far too seldom-presence. The complete immersion in living that doesn't deplete you, but gives you so much that your empty cup perpetually runneth over.
To the University High School Class of 2011: Congratulations for the way you've prepared and developed your righteous minds.
K. Robisch
June 2011
After much thorough work and study I decided I would start my speech as many greats have, Aristotle, Henry the Fifth, Batman, with a quote from the famous and renowned stand up comedian, Mr. Daniel Tosh.
And I quote:
Nobody changes after they hear a graduation speech!
After I am done speaking there no one is going to stand up and say "Thank you, after that I am going to turn my life around!"
Of course, being the Daniel Toshinite I am, I even follow him on Twitter, I found this immensely funny,
However when I gave it some time to settle, I came back to it in my thoughts and asked myself, "Then why was I and two other of my classmates chosen to give a speech today?"
But then I realized that this speech isn't about handing out advice on how to carry one's self or to give counsel, but this speech at its essence is a way to record how grateful I am to be apart of the class of 2011 and to give thanks to everyone involved in it.
Before University I came from an average sized public High School in the town of Lawrenceburg, IN - 25 miles west of Cincinnati. There we followed the ropes. Seven Classes. 25-minute lectures. 20 minutes for homework. And although I had close friends from Lawrenceburg High School, there was a lack of something in the air there that I didn't realize until I became a student at University my sophomore year.
I have never moved until my sophomore year and what of course was the most nerve racking part about it was attending a new school. From what I've learned from countless late night marathons of Boy Meets World is that being the "new kid" could be one the most traumatic events in a young persons life.
Suprisingly though, after my first day at University, I felt at home.
I'll remember the way Jordan McKinney and Catie Young, without a moment of hesitation, showed me, the new kid, the ropes around university. I'll remember ,even though my Saxophone skills were never up to par with him, how Kwame Newton would always be willing to help me out - even though John Coltrane would be rolling in this grave from the sounds I made. And I'll remember the warm-heartedness of Kevin Acosta and Molly Sanders, who would always greet you with a smile, even when we had no idea what was going on in Calculus.
These are just some examples that have affected me personally, but the fact of the matter is that without the entirety of the class of 2011, I would be much less of the person I am today.
The teachers and faculty as well are unlike any educational staff I have ever encountered because they actually enjoy to teach ! Each and every person of the faculty has this passion within them for what they do. I'll remember the conversations I had with Ms. Dean, or more really the times I listened to Ms. Dean's brilliance while she answered a question for me in forty minutes through an array astonishing information.
How can you know all that stuff?
I'll remember the passion that Ms. Lamagdeline had in her voice when she first illustrated the beauty of the Green Light and Owl Eyes in the Great Gatsby.
And I'll remember the way, even after I didn't have a class with him anymore, how Mr. Bradley would still play Trivial Pursuit with Brian Gramman and me. And honestly how in the world did you know who the last governor of Hong Kong was ? Jeez. The answer was Chris Patten if you wanted to know. Psh History Teachers.
The truth is though that each faculty member has a light in him or her that is a passion, a drive for education. And That I will never forget because they have laid out the foundation of my higher learning. All I can say is to the Faculty of University High School is Thank you. Thank you for you the extra mile each and every one of you go.
That's what a Graduation Speech is to me. It is not acknowledgment of what I've done nor is it some advice column. It is the recognition that the faculty of the School and the community of the class of 2011 has been one of the most positively impacting things in my life and I could not be more grateful to be apart of this Institution. So yes, maybe Daniel Tosh is right and no one will change there life after they hear me today, but the time I've spent here has changed me indefinitely for the better.
Frankly I could not see my life without University in it.
Class of 2011, thank you and Congratulations.
Thank you.
When reflecting on my life these past four years at University, I decided that the main goal of a high school is to be able to take the tiny children that we all once were and turn them into men and women. Looking back, Burke Miller was here... I distinctly remember how small we all were, and wondered to myself "How did we get here? What really makes a man?" So in order to find out, I googled it, and got a plethora of opinions on the subject from individuals ranging from Gandhi to Gandalf. But the concept that stuck out to me the most was from the art of manliness dot com, who found two distinct features that come about when you become a man: selflessness and humility. And I then realized how important having both of these qualities is to the University community. I know I have been given hundreds of opportunities to serve someone or something other than myself, and I have certainly put myself in plenty of humbling situations over my time here. And I'd really like to say that I'm a greater man because of it.
I came to University because of the food. Sorry mom and dad, but my high school decision really did come down to who had the best pizza. Thankfully though, when I showed up my freshman year, I found much more than pizza. I found a community with an incredible spirit filled with some of the greatest people I have ever met, all willing to get to know me. And did I take advantage of this? OF course not! I spent a lot of time at home, doing nothing, and in my head it all worked out, because I got excellent grades as a freshman. I said to myself NOW YOU'RE A MAN, and I thought I could just turn my hat backwards, pop on some shades, and coast through the rest of high school. And then sophomore year came. Humbling experience #1. The next two and a half semesters were an absolute massacre, both of my GPA and that inflated ego I had picked up freshman year. I was a broken mess, but there was one incredible guy who managed to put the pieces back together, my mentor Mr. Bradley. This is a great example of the selflessness I mentioned earlier. Even when I was unwilling to work, he continued to work in trying to get me back on the right academic track, and he gave me an extreme amount of support until I finally got my life together enough to realize that I was messing up and that I needed to make a change. I've been solid in the classroom ever since, and I really owe that to my mentor, because without him being there, I would never have made it all the way to this podium today.
So when did I finally figure out that I wanted to be a part of this community? I'd have to go with when I joined the golf team at the very end of my freshman year. Going into that first season, I was pretty terrible. I truly believe that at that time, anyone here in the audience today could have beaten me, and that includes grandparents, great grandparents, infants, and any small pets that might have come today as well. That means you Burke. But for one reason or another, Coach Morrison decided that my playing abilities would be perfect for varsity that year. This was the big humbling experience #2. High school varsity golf would eventually be great for me, but it certainly didn't start that way. My first match was a weather disaster. It was cold, windy, rainy, sometimes hailing, and there was even a touch of snow on the eighth hole. About halfway through I began writing my last will and testament on the back of my scorecard. I really thought golfing couldn't get any worse. Then at the next match, my opponent beat me by 30 strokes. For those of you who don't know golf, that is the equivalent of being beaten by 15 touchdowns in a football game. It was rough. But Morry never gave up on me. He isn't a licensed professional, but I'd put up Morry against anyone as the best golf coach I know. My first two years, we lost matches quite a lot, but there was no doubt that we always won in fun, and these past two seasons, now that we win more matches than we lose, we have even more fun. I've improved my game at University, but I also learned how it felt to be a part of a solid, cohesive team. Being on that golf team really convinced me that University was the place to be, and I wanted to immediately immerse myself in the culture.
So then what is the culture of University? This is where selflessness comes into play. Woodrow Wilson once said, "No man has ever risen to the real stature of manhood until he has found that it is finer to serve somebody else than it is to serve himself." And I believe that University really lives and breathes this. I would say that at our morning meetings, at least half of the announcements are related to some charity work that students are doing on the weekends. And we can't forget about the man standing next to me, Steve Dobbs, who was a huge part of University's Spirit Run, which attracted 600 people. That seemed crazy to me. A student? Organizing and running a 600-person charity event? That really just shows you what University is all about.
So did I make it to manhood? Well, let's evaluate my life. I'm going to a great college. I have a great job at the finest dining establishment in the United States, Wendy's. I now understand the importance of being humble and acting selflessly. And I've made some great friends that will be impossible to ever forget. So does that make me a man? Yeah, I guess so, but I feel much more proud to say I am joining this incredible group of men and women in the University High School Class of 2011. Thank you.
Commencement Remarks for the Class of 2011
I too want to welcome you today and I want to recognize two new University Board members, Mike Rogers and Latrece Murdock.
This is a great time in the life of our school. There were 100 new students this year - the rising sophomore class is now at 80 and effectively closed - we expect to open school with approximately 285 students, and to be at a capacity of around 320 students in the near future. Our seniors picked University before the rush started, and their "path less traveled, I know who I am and what I value" approach to choosing University continues to inform and illuminate the choices they make. Seniors - thank you.
One more number of note, seniors were awarded $3.2 million in merit aid, an average of over $97,000 per student, the highest per student average ever. We take pride in many things here at University, one of which is our world languages program. Languages are often second-class citizens at preparatory schools. Here they are sought after and seen as important experience by many University students. Next year we will have twenty-three students in AP French and Spanish Language courses, and five students in AP Spanish Literature. And graduating today is the first University student to complete AP coursework in both French and Spanish language, and in Spanish literature - Breanna Elzer.
Part of the fabric of University culture is the way in which we take what we do very seriously but don't take ourselves too seriously. When you start in portables with milk crates for lockers, it's hard to be too full of yourself. This is the least pretentious prep school I know of. When Peter Fayroian, the ISACS visiting team chair and head of the Greenhills School in Ann Arbor visited last spring, he sat for fifteen minutes at lunch in the conference room across the hall from my office with five of us before he realized Sandy Lange was the Chairman of the University Board of Trustees and not Maggy Dean. He told me later that board chairs always draw attention to themselves in one way or another. Not always.
After eleven years of school, I remain a bit in awe of what we have accomplished here together. Trustees imagined and continue to imagine a place where learning has a human face. They created a school where values, community and a commitment to quality mix together graceful and real. To the trustees of University High School - thank you. To senior parents, for the countless ways in which you have invested in University, and most of all, for the gifts of your sons and daughters - thank you. And to the University faculty, you continue to keep this vision real. For the gifts of inquiry you give, for the relationships you build, for the standards you set, for the belief in students you exhibit everyday, and for the difference you have made in the lives of our seniors - thank you. When the ISACS visiting team leaders left University at the end of their accreditation visit in April, they had had an unexpectedly emotional response to the school they saw. They took some of us aside and said, and I quote, "Now don't screw this up." We will all do our best.
To our seniors:
You were the first freshman to begin the year in Fairbanks Hall, and some of you were the last to shadow in the portables as 8th graders - that seems like a very long time ago. You are distinctively our quiet class - not Jordan, of course, and not Dobsie on stage, but there are a great number of shy smiles among you - think Tori, Chen and Molly. And many of you hold your own counsel first. You make sense of your experience before you articulate it, and your values most often determine what you do. You don't seek to draw attention to yourselves for attentions sake, you rarely put on airs, and you lack that negative sense of privilege that often comes with the actual privilege of having an independent school education. You show great respect for the world you seek to understand, and you rather painstakingly try to see your experience as it actually is. You have taken Hamlet's instructions to the players to heart.
Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'er step not the modesty of nature. For anything so o'er done is from the purpose, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time its form and pressure.
You have become quiet, effective students and leaders because, as the poem says, you thought to look for those tiny particles. You deliberately choose to appreciate, understand and affect your world. You are known here by how hard you have worked and by how much you care. Your voices have been heard. I am proud of who you are and of what you have accomplished.
University High School
Graduation Speech 2011
Dr. Dave Vesper
As I thought about this day, and talked to some of you about this event, I was reminded that today is sometimes called commencement, and sometimes graduation. I think it is neither. By the end of my speech, I hope you know what I mean. In the meanwhile, I have to use some word, so commencement will suffice for now.
First, congratulations to you all upon this commencement. We heard from Dr Robisch sage advice about be open to new things. I fully agree, but will also suggest that you must appreciate what is already known and more importantly, the process by which things are known.
With the aid of a telescope, I have watched, in real-time, the light from events that occurred as this country was being formed. I have watched gas crash from one star to another, knowing that the interaction occurred 200 years ago - that the light from this event has been traveling for 200 years to get to Earth, to my eyes.
This has in part shaped who I am. It has not shaped me via some mystical sense of awe at what I have observed, awe that I could possible know what happened so far away and so long ago. Rather, I am influenced by knowing the system of systems that has allowed me to make those observations. There is very long chain of accumulated knowledge that allowed me to see distant star systems. The technology of the telescope, of computers and image processing, the knowledge of atomic physics that lets us understand atoms and spectra, and the previous stellar observations that, in the aggregate, make the observation and interpretation of this stellar interaction possible - that is what impresses me. To be clear, it is this process that I am fascinated with, not the facts that lead to this observation. But it is a process that relies on the intellectual wealth of 10s of thousands of years of history.
Knowing how to find facts, and deciding if they are relevant to whatever issue you are studying - that is important. This is not just true in academics. In music, you do not aspire to play the same song again and again. You learn new music, and learn new music styles. The process of lifelong learning is what matters.
So, learning a process to learn, that is what I hope we have taught you here. We have Core Values. Adhering to them will lead to a happier, more rewarding life than not. I believe that they do so primarily because they foster an environment where you can learn to learn.
Why is this important? I have traveled to the other side of the world and seen what a lack of education does to a country. The history of Afghanistan and its problems is not simple. Yet the lack of education there is staggering. Iraq is better in education, but not much so.
Twice I have taught a J-term class on Failed States and Afghanistan. In each class, each student discussed a failed state in the world, ranging from Zimbabwe to the Central African Republic to Bangladesh and Haiti. Each student addressed the problems of their state and a plan to help their country grow in stability and structure. A reoccurring theme was the need for a strong education system. This seemed straightforward. The first time I taught the class I had a happy accident, and the second I did this intentionally. As part of our community service, we went to an IPS elementary school and helped teachers with their day. And afterwards, our students commented on how very hard it was to get some of their kids to learn. The reasons for this are not simple, and mainly tied around the stresses that poverty brings to all aspects of life.
But it is clear that a quality education is hard. It requires work from teachers, but it also requires work from students - work from you. This is not just to turn in assignments, but also to work to be mentally engaged. If you are confronted with new information, then process it and, if needed, change how you think about issue at hand. In short, make yourself learn.
Today you have a commencement. We have heard from Molly and Brian about the changes they have undergone in the last 4 years. Steve told us about the people who helped with that change. All said that they are not the person he or she was 4 years ago. Four years from now, you'll graduate from college. Dr. Robisch has discussed how to start that. Whoever you are today, I hope you are not that person 4 years from now. Grow. Learn. Animals learn. Jack birds build tools to get food. Monkeys teach each other to use spears to hunt. But humans dominate this planet because we started learning, and relating and retaining knowledge, faster and sooner than all other animals. Be a good human. Continue to learn. It is through learning, the critical analysis of information, and subsequent decision making that you become good citizens of our participatory democracy.
But again, why? I believe, over history, in the nearly continuous increase in the quality of life of mankind. The current suffering on this planet is, in many ways, immense. In the last few months we have seen natural disasters on an enormous scope and violence plagues many regions. Yet there are over 6.9 billion people on the Earth. And if we look at violence compared to the number of people, then an interesting fact emerges. For its first decade, this century is on track to be the most peaceful ever in human history. I know progress doesn't affect all equally. Our mission statement talks of "...expanding hearts...." We need compassion. We need to spread progress. And yet I am very optimistic for the future. Thousands of years of recorded progress, by societies that have learned and evolved, makes me so.
In conclusion, I see this as not a graduation, which is an ending. It is also not a commencement, which is a beginning. It is rather just a step in your progress. Congratulations again on another step in your learning.
Welcome parents, friends, faculty, and students. I would like to thank my classmates for giving me the opportunity to speak on the behalf of our senior class.
Today, I share the stage with future scientists, writers, musicians, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and perhaps even politicians. We all have an effect on future generations. That effect began four years ago.
We have developed friendships over the last few years, and while now is the time to celebrate our accomplishments we know that in a few short months we will be leaving the safe protection of family and friends to pursue our ambitions. Remember as Walt Disney said, "All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them." We've had this time here and now we're leaving and it's scary. However, hope can kill fear of the unknown.
I am a creature of habit, and I won't pretend to tell you that I am ready for college. I would be perfectly comfortable commuting from home to go to school. I mean, who wouldn't want to live in their own room instead of a dorm? Or have homemade meals? When I came to University I didn't know anyone, and was somewhat intimidated by "high school." Although, this ended up being the best opportunity and gave me a chance to meet a lot of interesting people, and make some close friends. I am hoping the same experience will happen when I attend school in Maryland.
University High School has prepared its students for a promising future. The atmosphere here encourages hard work and success. If it weren't for teachers like Ms. LaMagdeleine in AP Lang lit who stood up on the desks and moved from one desk to the other just to get a point across about the Great Gatsby, or Mr. FitzGibbon making hypothetical situations about Dr. Robisch to explain how our government operates, or who could forget Mr. Bradley explaining the death of William McKinley by having Steve Dobbs and J.P Mershon act it out. These are just some examples of how our enthusiastic teachers can make teaching both fun and memorable. Teachers, I thank you for the time and effort you have put in in order to give us the best education possible. As John Dewey said, "Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."
High school is a time of change as well. This includes all of the graduates up here on stage with me. My freshman year I was really quiet, and would have never gotten up to speak in front of all you. Now, as a senior, I have gained the confidence to come up here and speak on behalf of my senior class. Whether it is our hairstyle, the clothes we wear, or the circle of friends that have changed. At the same time, as we reflect upon our time here, some things always remain the same. For instance, those of you who know me, know that I blush very easily, and whether it was sophomore year in Mr. Priest's class or now when I am speaking in front of you. I have learned to accept that will always be me. I will never forget Chris Thompson walking over to morning meeting looking for arrowheads or Kwame Newton falling asleep in virtually every class, or Marcus van der Meulen making bird noises during an AP test. Come to think of it, maybe we should change a little more. Nah, it would make life boring...
Although we came to University to get an education, we are walking away with more than that. We are walking away with friends, memories and life lessons that will serve us well beyond our high school years and onto the rest of our lives. As Adlai Stevenson stated, "Your days are short here; this is the last of your springs. And now in the serenity and quiet of this lovely place, touch the depths of truth, feel the hem. You will go away with old, good friends. Don't forget when you leave why you came."
As we step off of this stage today, let us take our memories with us and embrace the challenges of the future.
