Commencement Speech

When people say the four years of highschool are going to be the best and most fun filled years of your life, it’s one of the truest things. You find new friends, you learn so much and hit some barriers that you think you could never get over. Here are these barriers and challenges that I had to overcome to get to where I am today. 

My freshman year was a pretty good year I’d say. The first day of school was obviously the most challenging learning where my classes were and who I had for friends in them. I don’t play any fall sports, so I was just mainly focusing on school for the first part. Then came basketball season. I wasn’t expecting to make varsity or anything so I had a pretty good year playing for the JV team. Probably one of the funnest years of basketball for me. We had a good season but we were just a JV team so that didn’t really matter that much. Come spring time I played lacrosse. As a freshman I was one of the starting attackmen. This was one of the greatest seasons Oak Hill Lacrosse program has had in a very long time. I don’t remember what exactly our final record was but we earned a first round playoff spot where we would play Cony High School. I believe we were very doubted going into this game. I got injured very early into the game but our team didn’t look back and we ended up beating Cony winning our first playoff game in YEARS. Overall freshman year was a good year.

Now, here we are as Sophomores. Glad to not be Freshman anymore but still Underclassmen. This year was another decent year. Once again in the fall I didn’t play a sport so I could have the ready for basketball season to come around. I had a pretty good first semester of school. I was fortunate enough to swing from the JV to Varsity basketball squad. As I didn’t play much for varsity it was still a small little goal since I was a sophomore. The JV team had another decent year and the varsity squad missed the playoffs by one seed. Even though we didn’t make the playoffs, that season was probably one of the most memorable seasons ever. Now it is springtime, so close to not being an underclassman anymore. I made the decision that I would not play lacrosse that year because I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. I ended up helping out coaching the seventh and eighth grade lacrosse team. This was also another time of a lot of learning experiences. Dealing with middle school kids isn’t the easiest thing sometimes. 

And just like that we are juniors. The year that is supposed to be the most challenging year yet and from my personal experience, this was my worst year. I don’t really know what hit me, but I was the least motivated student there could have been. Pushing everything to the side waiting until the last minute to do everything. It just seemed like I didn’t care. I wasn’t able to play basketball because of my eligibility. This was when I kind of realized that I was in a bad spot. This one really hit me hard. Come spring semester I figured I would play lacrosse. In early March I was at a pre-season clinic where I ended up hurting my knee. It swelled within minutes and we thought it was going to be a torn ligament. We went to the hospital where I got an MRI and it was much less than what he had expected but still had to sit out for the first half of the season. Another set back but I came back. We had a remarkable year going 12-0, but lost the first round in the playoffs by 1 goal. Overall, my junior year was awful academically wise. 

And it just seemed that I was walking through those doors for my first day of freshman year, but we are seniors. These few years flew right by us. Here I am writing my commencement speech at home instead of in class next to my friends. But first the fall semester, I had a pretty good fall semester. I was eligible for my senior year of basketball. I made the team but I didn’t play much because of my junior year but I still had fun. We missed the playoffs once again. Then came early March when a very unexpected virus came and made us cancel school for the rest of the year. I was probably having one of the better semesters of my high school career and then we had to go to online learning which really screwed with it. 

After all, High school wasn’t my favorite thing but it could have been much worse. One piece of advice that I would like to leave is that just get your work done, it makes everything easier on yourself and your teacher and to the class of 2020, good luck with your future endeavors. 

Photo on Foter.com