Dear students and faculty, friends and family, I thank you for being here today. 

Diamonds are made under pressure, that's a saying I like to tell myself as I do my homework 20 minutes before its due. The truth is there is a lot of pressure in High School,  it's a challenge, it's four years of hard work, difficult obstacles and sometimes relentless pressure. But classmates, you guys sure are sparkling right now.

I want to say Congratulations to the class of 2023, we did it, what a relief, am I right? Look how far we’ve come from the little kids who were sitting right there in those bleachers just four years ago with as much anxiety as excitement filling our bodies. , think now of all the joy we've had, and the memories we’ve made.

As a great poet once said “There's always gonna be another mountain, always gonna wanna make it move, Always gonna be an uphill battle, Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose. - thank you, Miley Cyrus. That songs holds some truth to me, our path certainly has not been a straight road, bit we've ridden the highs and grinded (sic) out the lows we’ve realized “It ain't about how hard you’re hit, it's about how you can get hit and keep moving forward” Thank you, Rocky. I think of that every time before I get a math quiz back.

As we are celebrating the end of this chapter in our lives we are also celebrating the people that got us here. I want to thank all the parents and teachers for being here today but also being there everyday. Thank you for being there to push us, root for us, and fight for us. We would not be here without you. 

But also want  thank you for not being there. No I’m not being passive-aggressive. I say thank you because high school is a brief period of time where growth happens at its fastest rate. We are changing and transforming into independent people, with grown up responsibilities and adult freedoms. 

From late night homework sessions, to finals week freakouts, you let us make our own mistakes and face our own adversities. You allowed us to fully discover ourselves in times of hardship.

So I thank the parents for letting us sift through that discomfort even if it was against your own instincts. You let us feel the pressure that would mold us into the resilient people we've become. You can create happy people in predictable environments but I also think that there is something invaluable of leaving an experience with a scar or a lesson to make us into better people. I think we can all look now with a little perspective and appreciate the journey. “Because its not about how fast you get there or about whats waiting on the other side, its the climb”- that’s Miley again.

When I entered high school I was constantly wondering where my place in this school would be.

I asked if would I be an athlete or an academic, artist or an engineer? For a while I feared I wouldn’t find a passion or direction, a club or people to which I could assign myself. I think that like everyone, I feared I wouldn’t fit into the ideal mold of a student or teenager. But, over time I experienced.  I tried new things, met new people and discovered new things about myself that l have made me who I am. It was from the daily molding of my environment that I found that who I was wasn’t confined to the limits of who I talked to or what activities I did. I was how I acted, no matter who I talked to or what I did. The accumulation of the different things that I could do and be apart of no matter how diverse become apart of me. 

And that is who we are as a school and class we aren’t divided into cliques or categories, and over these last couple of weeks we’ve become more connected as a group, sadly the reality of leaving each other is become more and more real. I’m going to miss you guys. A lot of us have known each other since we were little kids but we’ve also picked up some great people along the way. remember across the road playing with colored pencils and learning the alphabet, remember nap time? Gosh we took that for granted.

Yes we’ve have grown up.  But we aren't done, not growing, because no one is. No one ever is done learning, done experiencing, done changing. We have gained an education not just in academia but in life, school to me isn’t being told the right answers, it's being given the opportunity to discover new ideas and become more.

I now look back in amusement at the kid I was four years ago who wondered who I would become not because I was wrong but because I am there again and I think we will all continue to be in that place because even though this monumental chapter of our lives is coming to an end, really our lives are just beginning. 

Thank you.