THE WAKEFIELD MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF 2019 celebrates graduation by tossing their caps in the air.
Published in the June 3, 2019 edition.
WAKEFIELD — The Red Sea became a little smaller Saturday as 226 seniors bid farewell to Wakefield Memorial High and prepared to embark on the next leg of their life’s journey.
With proud parents and others looking on during annual commencement exercises inside the Charbonneau Field House, graduating seniors listened as Valedictorian William Stevens — a competitive runner — said that “while your diploma symbolizes your success here at Wakefield Memorial High School, it’s merely a medal at the end of the race. The real reward is the completion of your time here, no matter how difficult, stressful, or strenuous, not just the piece of paper you receive. You all are going out into the world to make it a better place, and just like all those runners circling Lake Q, you will struggle and you will find difficulty, but you will persevere and you will accomplish great things.
“In these seats sit the people who are going to change the world, one race at a time. We have future presidents and her cabinet members, running a marathon uphill through a blizzard. We have future CEOs slowly building up their mileage to lead a team one day, future world renowned musicians pushing through the tough workouts so they’re ready to perform, future astronauts blazing their own paths to places no one has run before. There is no limit to how far we can run, and I am extremely confident that the people sitting in this room will lead us in the right direction.”
Class Essayist Isabella Kehoe spoke of the passing of time, and how brief our stay on Earth is.
“Having this mind-boggling knowledge, we can choose between two outlooks:
“One is that, given our time frame, what we do and who we are doesn’t matter. In this case, we believe that the universe has made us small. And so, we do nothing.
“But I am more inclined to align myself with the second view: That the universe did not make us small. The universe put each one of us here for a reason. The brevity of our time does not make our actions insignificant, but heightens their importance. It is natural to feel overwhelmed by this, but we cannot not let fear prevent us from filling our time as completely as possible with laughter, friendship, and accomplished goals. We must accept that mistakes, even failures, do not equate to wasted hours or days or weeks or years, but to lessons learned. We must come to understand that new beginnings come in all shapes and sizes, and at unexpected times.
“In the past four years, we have grown. We have walked past one another in the halls and waved, or quietly wished that we had taken the time to know someone as a friend. We have sat in each other’s old seats and written our names inside to-be-returned books. We have grown close to people we never thought we’d get a chance to know. We have sung and danced on stage, or finally tried out for that team, or taken a class that made us truly happy to be here, even on our worst days. We have learned that a room filled with unfamiliar faces is a room full of opportunity, potential friendships, and untold stories. Now we need to embrace that sentiment in every avenue of our lives,” the essayist concluded.
Caroline Herzog delivered the salutatory address.
“In life, we will always have some goal or destination. For the past four years, our major goal has been to get to this point right now: graduation. But high school isn’t just this one day; it has been hundreds of days full of thousands of memories, of both laughter and sadness. And as we move forward and dream up new goals, we cannot forget that enjoying our journey is just as important as reaching our destinations.
“Take marching band, for instance. While our ultimate goal was to score high at finals, that’s not why we chose marching band. We played in marching band because we loved all the little adventures along the way, like when we huddled together under blankets at the Thanksgiving football game, or when we had the most philosophical conversations walking down the hill at the end of band camp each night, exhausted and sunburned, but happy.
“Everyday, in marching band and in everything else we might do, we get the chance to appreciate life, simply by looking around once in a while and taking in the details. During the past four years, whether we were discussing Hamlet or debating how many aliens we believe exist in the universe in physics class, high school has provided us with countless opportunities for wonder.
“And even though we’ve learned so much through these opportunities, we cannot forget that the world is not done teaching us. This April, I spent two weeks in Italy as part of our Italian exchange trip, living with my Italian partner and her family and learning about Italian culture, from the cars they drive to their ancient history. And while there’s nothing quite like learning about the history of the Colosseum while standing right in front of it, the most important lesson many of us took away from the trip was that Italian families are more or less just like us. While a language barrier exists, which was a bit of a problem when my partner’s 90 year-old grandfather came over for lunch and started yelling questions at me in Italian, some things transcend cultures, like a universal love for fluffy cats, and greater things, like kindness and friendship. On that trip, we learned more about ourselves as fellow humans than anything else.
“We learn not only from new experiences, but also from past mistakes. I’m sure some of the Dolbeare kids remember the Great Mealworm Escape. In second grade, we learned about bugs in science class, and in our classroom we kept a container of mealworms to observe throughout the month. However, the container didn’t have a lid, and one day we were surprised to hear our teachers scream when picking up our homework. It turns out that mealworms could climb up the glass walls of their container, and they escaped and crawled all over our homework. Needless to say, it was interesting to spend the rest of the morning pulling mealworms off papers, jackets, and tables.
“Sometimes, mealworms escape. After all, nobody’s perfect, and the worms certainly didn’t know any better. But even these messy accidents and mistakes are important. Without the mealworms’ jailbreak, we never would have thought to put a lid on their container, and the time we spent as a class that day uncovering mealworms in our jackets has provided us with lasting memories. Events like these give us a chance to grow and learn, so that we never have to find actual worms in our homework again. They serve to remind us that sometimes, life doesn’t go as planned, but this is okay. Life wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable without the unexpected. There will be some things, both good and bad, that we will just have to learn by living, experiencing, and appreciating. This might mean an adventure as big as joining marching band, or going halfway around the world to learn about a different culture, or it might just mean picking up the occasional stray mealworm. Although we’re graduating from high school today, the world still has endless mistakes, surprises, discoveries, and memories simply waiting for us to uncover and enjoy.”
Class President Carter Margolis welcomed everyone the graduation exercise, and introduced his peers like this:
“So who are these students sitting here in front of me? Who is this group of … individuals that now come together as one for the last time? There isn’t a one-liner that immediately comes to mind. As the saying goes, you cannot judge a book by its cover. Indeed, in order to truly know the Class of 2019, one has to dig a little deeper than just the descriptions visible on the surface. But to me, what separates the Class of 2019 from others is their willingness to act and to accept each other’s differences, characteristics that don’t appear on the surface.
“Our character is first defined by our daily activism. The Class of 2019 is a group who is unafraid to speak out. Believing we are more than just students here at Wakefield Memorial High School, we aren’t afraid to voice our opinions about changes we’d like to see in this country, in our daily lives, and in this school. It is important that we continue to voice our opinions when we agree or disagree with the world because caring about these issues that affect us most is the first step to fixing them. The walkout held last year was created and organized by many of the minds in this room. While we may have different political opinions, our walkout memorialized and honored the lives lost every day to school shootings. We may not have changed the country’s laws, but in our determination, we brought awareness to our community of the issues we care about and acted on them. Granted, this determination can also be seen in the creative parking spots that never fail to get a call from the office or the loudspeaker telling us to move our cars after homeroom. No matter how late we may be running to school, the teacher lot is still unfortunately reserved for the teacher. Nevertheless, in a world where change is inevitable, it is important we remember our willingness to act and stand for what we believe in no matter the scale of the issue.”
Near the end of the less than two hour ceremony, this year’s graduates tossed their mortar boards in the air, celebrating their impressive accomplishment.
