Hello and greetings Class of 2019 and to their various family, friends, and other individuals who have come to attend this momentous ceremony. Now, before I get started, I’d like to make a request to all of my classmates in the room right now: try to remember the person you were before your first day at Beaver. For some of you that may be as many as seven years ago, so really, try to remember as much as you can. Not just what you looked like: what did you care about, what was your favorite smell, what sort of music did you like, what convergence of tiny little details made you, you? Do you all have that memory? (Pause) Good, now imagine for a moment that that exact person is sitting here in your place. That’s absurd — completely bonkers — right? But in theory it almost makes sense, because if we’re judging by traditional, abstract standards all you have to do is get through your high school degree and move on into the rest of the world. Of course, that’s not at all what happens in real life. Because by virtue of living our lives, and engaging with the world around us, we change.

I remember when I first came to Beaver. I was about yea high and had a little bit of a bowl cut going on. But more than who I was what sticks out to me the most about my first day at Beaver is that I was completely unable to navigate the hallways, and for more classes than I’m willing to admit I kept walking past the door until I finally figured out that that was where I was supposed to be going for. Now that idea itself seems very silly, because I’ve now spent six academic years living and working within these halls, and with the physicality of the school itself changing and expanding, I know every single part of this building. And doesn’t just include walls, doors, and rooms, but all of the people within them.

At one point or another, we each saw one another for the first time, and although the when is different, the fact of the matter stays the same: the people we’re imagining sitting among us right now are very different than the ones who are really here. So, naturally, that’s because of change. For instance, you probably look pretty different now compared to back then, but it’s not just the same physical change that happened here: with the laborious process of building the R+D Center. No, the architecture of the soul is not determined by top-down construction, but rather is the synthesis of your surroundings. In the same way that I couldn’t navigate the physical halls and corridors, on the first day of school it was nigh impossible to navigate the relationships between each other. Again, going back to that initial image of who you were when you first came to this school, in all likelihood, you were still trying to figure out how to navigate yourself, while also being plunged into a completely new environment.

And that’s what’s truly remarkable that I want to highlight. Not that we change in general, it’s like gravity, you can’t stop it from happening. What’s worth of celebration is how we grew and evolved collectively. In the grand schemes of things, it hasn’t been a long time since you were the person who first stepped into this school. But ever since that day slowly, inch by inch, we all began to shape the trajectories of the people we would be. In the first few months, from laughing in the lunchroom to discussion in the classroom, we began to see each other as peers and our common peership as a true community. Once you establish yourself as an individual in a community, you develop the liberty to dig into that space and really figure out who you are and what you can do. That’s where we get the firsts. Considering all the time you’ve spent at Beaver, and the things you’ve done here, and you’ll recognize all of the instances where you did something for the first time within this school. Naturally, the events springing to your mind are likely big and dramatic; events that redefined your lives, but all the small things like using a semicolon correctly or taking a divitive. Regardless of the specifics, all likelihood, the first time you did something, you weren’t that good at it, but over all the years you got better at it. But you didn’t do it alone. We were all there for each other, scaffolding and building off of each other. Whenever one of us failed, there would always be another to pick us up, and when one of us won, there would always be someone handing out hi-fives or congratulatory pats on the back. It was that process, compounded over hundreds of days that played the biggest part in our development into the people we are today.

I cannot list what we have all individually accomplished, because we would be here all day, but I can tell you, collectively, we shot for the stars and have redefined what it means to be a student at this school through utilizing all the additions to this space and setting a new academic and moral standards. You shouldn’t just be proud of all the ways you’ve changed and grown since your first day on campus; we should be proud of ourselves and eachother for having molded one another into the upstanding young adults we are today. We stand here today to celebrate and officiate our achievement and our identity and all the achievements we accomplished together. We did it!

Of course, the sweeter the victory, the more bitter the disbandment. In a matter of moments, the collective will I have talked about today will be acknowledged and in short order scattered throughout the world. It seems as if a force that has dominated and directed our lives for so long to evaporate and will no longer be with us. However, the truth of the matter is not so simple. We have all engaged, embraced, and enveloped ourselves within the collective spirit of each other, and even though we may leave the halls of this school, we won’t ever truly be gone. After all, how could one be expected to deal with the many trials and tribulations of life without thinking back to the very first time one deal with said problems.

One of the most famous phrases in all of human history is “Know thyself.” What the phrase posits that the most important thing in life is to understand who you are, so that you have a better ability to act in the world around you. I think the phrase is effective when it comes to the general idea, but it is a somewhat surface level analysis. Well, as we’ve already established, the people who we are now are the results of the influence of all the people who surrounded us. As a result, it becomes impossible to know thyself — or anyone else for that matter — without considering the context within which you were forged within. As much as it might hurt to part now, what you have to understand is that so long as you stay self-aware about who you are, all of the great friends and memories you’ve made at this institution shall remain with you for the rest of your days.

But enough about the past: what does the future hold? Personally, I have no idea. I’m not fully aware what I’m going to be doing tomorrow let alone years down the line — and making predictions for the other 85 of you, well, that’s just not fair. But, I can say with reasonable certainty, in a couple of years, you will be sitting in a room not too different from this one, listening to someone else speak, and you might just think about the person you are today the same you are certainly thinking about who you were the first time you entered Beaver. So, the natural question to ask is: what am I like? What kind of person do I become? Again, I don’t know. But it’s certainly not going to be who you are today.

Which is naturally weird, and somewhat unnerving to think, but it’s good! Hopefully, when you look back, you understand that you have grown and improved dramatically as an individual. In upcoming years, whenever change seems to be hitting you too fast, or you get ripped out of your comfort zone remember the phoenix. Although the fires of change might scorch your skin as you enter a new and confusing world, it may hurt at first, but that’s just the first step in the process. Because when you are encircled by the flames of change, it is best to embrace them, so that from the ashes of the person you used to be, someone new will always emerge. And when you’re given the opportunity, it is always better to ride the waves of change than to fight them. In doing so, you’ll be able to emerge from the next couple of years in the same way you emerged from Beaver: a new person, ready to take on life in completely new ways. For that reason, I encourage all of you to do the same thing you did hear wherever you are heading next year: building and living within communities where you can continue to grow with others.

From then on, the rest is up to you. We’re all changing, all through our lives, and we’re never really the same person, not even for one day. But that’s good, because that means you can always get better, you can always attempt to the circumstance around you, or even work to make the world around you a better place. So long as you remember all the people that you used to be, remember your roots, all the people that made you who you currently are, then change can only be for the better, because we can keep the best aspects of our past selves with us forever. Class of 2019, I want to thank you all for changing with me, none of us would be the people we are today without each other. On that note, as we head of the for the final time, Class of 2019, my class, our class, I wish the best for you. I wish that for the rest of your life that every memory is sweet, every passion burns like the wings of a phoenix, and that you’ll always keep changing in the best ways. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, which is hopefully a little happy and a little scary. Good news, that’s called excitement, and there’s gonna be a lot of it. Beaver, I let you go.