I have learned so much from all of you, not just in how to be a teacher, but your ability to laugh, smile,  and persevere in the midst of the stresses of school and life is inspiring to everyone including me. I have memories of each of you that I will treasure forever as my first students (my kids as I call you all): Brian’s weird analogies that he’d use to help his classmates understand difficult Chemistry concepts, but most of the time just resulted in me spending 5 minutes to un-confuse everyone, Claudia’s Halloween Lab incident, claiming to have made it all the way to the top of the mountain in South Africa with Jaicee and Morgan, almost getting attacked by a lion with Emile, Period 6 Chemistry, Will Connelly’s Chemistry experience, seeing Phoebe sing that showstopper solo in Cabaret 2018, Jackie and Olivia and their “girls’ group” during chem lab and Christian with his Advanced Chemistry class. I could go on, but Mr. Russell told me to make this “short, but not too short.”

So…if these graduates have done so much for me, what can I possibly offer them in terms of wisdom and advice.

I thought about something my choir director in college used to say. Each year Sarah would talk to the graduating seniors and tell them that she never taught us anything that we didn’t always know. She said that the world had thrown so much mud and filth and dirt upon us that we didn’t know who we were or what we were capable of doing. She said that all she did was brush that mud and filth off of us so that we could become the shining, brilliant individuals that we were.

I didn’t fully appreciate what Sarah meant until I became a teacher and saw what I and all the other teachers here actually do. Who solves a difficult Calculus or chemical reaction-stoichiometry problems? You do. Who works for weeks or months gathering research from a multitude of sources and synthesizes it into a coherent History term paper? You do. Who sings a spectacular musical number at All School Morning Meeting or onstage? You do. You were able to do all those things yourself. The world made you think that you couldn’t, that you weren’t strong enough, that you weren’t a “math” person, or that you couldn’t write well. It made you think that you weren’t able to tackle each of those huge tasks at first. But eventually you did each one of those things. All your teachers and parents and coaches had to do was show that you could do it. They brushed all that mud and filth off and showed you that you were that shining brilliant individual who was capable of accomplishing any task that was put before you. Today we celebrate all of you as the shining, brilliant, and CONFIDENT young men and women that you are. You have accomplished it all. You are all capable of doing anything that you want to do. You just need to remember that you can. You’re going to go off to college. The world is going to throw more mud, filth and dirt on you as you head to these new places, take new courses, build and develop new relationships, new lifestyles. Remember that below all that mud there is always this shining, brilliant, and confident person that is sitting here in this Chapel today.