Heather was a long-time student at Mentor and is now a mergers and acquisitions lawyer in Amsterdam (ho-hum!). Take a few minutes to read this and I will have some final thoughts…
I read a story once about a girl who was supposed to be the valedictorian at her school, but was unjustly denied the opportunity to speak to her class. She said that what she regretted most was not being able to say a simple thank you and goodbye. So I want to tell you know, while we’re all still here together, how much I enjoyed coming to school with you each day. How much fun I had. How much I liked Mohiz’s shoes. How crazy were the questions Greg asked in English class. How much I laughed.
I also want to say thank you to all our parents for their support, and thank you to my own parents in particular; to my dad, who took me out for dinner on the evening before my history paper was due in order to calm me down. And to my mom, for not being able to sleep when I was out late at night.
My parents, unfortunately, remember very little of their years in high school, partly because they weren’t there together, so they don’t have any mutual memories, and also because, for them, high school was a long time ago. A REALLY long time ago. For all of us right now, though, high school is still a very real, close-up thing. Hardly a memory at all. It represents a quarter of our lives. But that will change. We’ve already had our first small taste of life without Mentor. It won’t be long before high school fades entirely into the background.
A lot of times last year, I wondered what parts of school I’d forget before the summer was done. And I wondered too what parts I would remember best. Now, after only six weeks away from home, I have some of my answer.
I’ve met students at university who’ve never had to write a research paper. Who are afraid to go into the library because they don’t know how to use a computer card catalogue. Who slink into class late and hid in the back row, hoping and praying that the professor won’t call on them. Who act out because they are afraid of growing up. Who have been told they are good writers but who aren’t able to put a subject and a verb together correctly to form a complete sentence. And who laugh, embarrassed, because they don’t understand why they should.
What’s worse, these are for the most part intelligent, capable young people. Their teachers have been telling them for years that they could be anything they wanted. Only no one ever showed them how to go about it.
Whether they know it or not, what these students lack is an education like the one we received here. Our teachers demanded so much of us. They expected us to hand in two thousand, three thousand even five thousand thoroughly researched, technically sound, well-written words – and on time. They expected us to find derivatives without calculators, to understand and explain why energy isn’t a thing you can hold in your hand, and to learn pages of geography by rote so we could spit it all back out in one grueling five-hour exam. They expected us to come to class awake and neatly dressed and on time. All this because they were sure of capabilities we didn’t yet know we had. Our teachers did these things out of respect for us that we might show them respect in return. We watched them and we learned to respect ourselves. We should count ourselves lucky.
After tonight, we will no longer have our teachers, or our parents, or each other, to depend on. We’ll have to depend on ourselves. But what we learned at this school will make leaving it easier. We will leave confident and capable and able to handle what life throws our way.
And because we learned what many others did not, we can be role models. Regardless of our specific endeavours, we can all set hard work and excellence as our standard and we can expect excellence of the people around us.
So when we are old and grey like my parents, I hope that we’ll at least remember that one important lesson. Years from now, I’ll wonder what you’re up to – and I’ll be happier knowing that somewhere out there, there are forty-odd people who left this place the same time I did and took with them a sense of self-respect.
I’ll look back and I’ll think “being here was a good thing.” It is because I knew you here that I can say with confidence and hope,
Thank you and good bye.
Heather would have trouble recognizing the school now as we have grown by leaps and bounds and made so many changes to our facilities since then. Her Mentor did not include a turf field and dome, Mac labs, TSS, AP courses, nor the North/South gyms and the graduating class has grown by 100 students! She and the students mentioned are unrecognizable to most of our staff members now and the Class of 2019 would have no clue who any of them are…after all, the Class of 1998 is 40 years old (and ironically, are becoming “old and grey” like Heather’s parents)! But I think if you just switched the names, this speech could be written by this year’s valedictorian (except for the five-hour geography exam part, that is…)!
It is a good reminder to anyone who thinks that our academic programming is too challenging. Yes, it is challenging but our teachers are preparing students for post-secondary education where things will be even tougher (academically, mentally, and socially). Or, as Heather puts it, the challenges were put in place because her teachers were “sure of capabilities we didn’t yet know we had”.
I shared the speech with the current Mentor high school staff and Mrs. Muresan may have put it best.
“A testament to the content of this speech is the speech itself!”
Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College/TEAM School
