Appreciate the people around you, trust yourself and make deliberate choices, members of the graduating class of 2019 encouraged their fellow graduates.
During Conant High School’s graduation on Friday night, 88 students accepted their diplomas and readied to move onto their next stage in life.
Whatever that stage might turn out to be, Salutatorian Cameron Feyrer said, it should be a deliberate choice.
“Someone once told me, everyone gets somewhere, but most people get there on accident. So whether you’re graduating today by a miracle or you put in hours on end to stand here today, make sure whatever your future holds, you get there on purpose,” Feyrer said. “Make the small decisions today that will allow you to tell a better story tomorrow.”
Feyrer’s words seemed to echo the class motto, a quote from Les Brown which advised the class to “Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, and no one else.”
Class President Tessa Blood told her classmates to remember to take more than book learning away with them, and to remember the people and experiences that shaped them.
“One of our teachers told me that in 10 years, we wouldn’t remember the 50 literary devices we were supposed to have memorized. But we would remember watching the entire first season of ‘Stranger Things’ in our creative writing class,” Blood said during her farewell speech.
Blood encouraged students to live in the now and appreciate the relationships they made, and will make in the future. And one of the most important relationships to cultivate, said class Valedictorian Arianna Wentworth, is with themselves.
“The person you are stuck with the entirety of your life is yourself. Even if you grow sick of this person, they do know you best, and believe it or not, they love you. You are your strongest ally,” Wentworth said.
Wentworth said she knows it’s not always easy to see yourself in that light. But no matter what her fellow student’s relationship with themselves might be, Friday’s graduation represented a significant milestone they all could celebrate.
“For those of you who might not be in the best relationship with yourself right now, remind yourself that you’ve gotten this far. You’re graduating. You are somebody to be proud of,” Wentworth said.