Glory Days

We gather here today to mark twelve years of hard work that has led to this milestone… graduation. Along the way, we have gained friendships, experiences, and a deep appreciation for spark notes. Every last one of us in this room has gone through personal growth and we have come out better people for it. For these reasons, despite all of our faults, I’m proud to be considered apart of the class of 2018.      

A lot of people say the high school will have been the best years of our lives, our glory days if you will. The future is uncharted territory at this point so it might just end up being true, but at least we had a great run. Back in the fifth grade when Wales, Sabattus, and Litchfield combined, no one would have guessed that they were combining forces of nature that I consider this class to be. When RSU4 decided to implement standards-based learning back in sixth grade, we were the guinea pig class. It was awkward and difficult at times and yet we persisted through it. While entering our freshman year of high school, we were called the laziest class the school had seen to date. Despite that connotation, we were the first freshman class to win Winter Carnival. We managed to come together and win all four years in a row. It is this sense of community that makes our class one of the greats.

If you think about it, we are like one big family. There has been fighting, bullying, tears, but at the end of the day, we come through for one another when times are really hard. Teamwork has always been one of our highlights along with the willingness to attempt the impossible. Which often translates into a group of people working together to pass a semester’s worth of work in the last week before the summer. Through the years there has been plenty of incidents regarding sharing documents and other work with each other. Some may see that as cheating or plagiarism, but I choose to see that as a group of people who care too much about one another to watch them give up and fail. The class of 2018 without a doubt has always stuck together and that has never ceased to amaze me.

Although the people amaze me more and more every day, I have to give credit where credit is due. We are partly molded the way we are because of Oak Hill and its many wonders. We know how to manage the unkindest of situations because we have had to get by with a roof that has a new leak in it every other day. We have grown to truly appreciate our mom’s home cooked meals because of Oak Hill’s infamous lunch program. Cherishing any and all clean water we get because we now know what it’s like to not have it. We all tend to be more accepting of others because we have had to learn to accept sharing the building with ants and mice. Last, but not least, we have grown to be patient and compliant because we had to go through the English IV curriculum “reading” every last book written by Shakespeare. From the bottom of my heart, thank you Oak Hill.                  

With all of these lessons learned and memories gained, I feel confident in saying that if high school turns out to be our glory day than the ride could have been a lot worse. Yet I truly believe that our glory days are yet to come. Thinking about it, if we can come together as a community and survive a whacked out grading system, way too many minutes of membean, a building that is falling apart, and still have the motivation to continue on than our best days are ahead of us. The best piece of advice I have come to accept is don’t look at high school as your glory days, but instead take the best memories and keep on working at accomplishing all that I know you can. Good Luck class of 2018 and farewell!

Photo on Foter.com