Morgan Bukowski
Greetings family, friends, teachers, community members, and anyone else who may not fit under those categories, and welcome to the graduating ceremony of 2018.
As you can see, this year’s graduating class is somewhat small, but what we lack in mass, we make up for in pure, unadulterated sass. There are 14 of us, and somehow within our class there are 14 different demographics. Having this many personalities in one compact class has not made us the easiest to teach, I am sure the majority of the faculty (especially Mrs. T) can agree that organizing us is comparable to herding cats.
As a class we have few similarities, but we all share our experience as J.V. Humphries students. This experience has been both positive and negative. It is negative due to our school’s small size; everyone knows everything about everyone. Being in close proximity with the same people for 13 years has certainly tested our patience a number of times, but we have held it together … for the most part. The positive experience of J.V. Humphries is also due to its small size. I know I am contradicting myself by saying this, but J.V. Humphries’ size pushed us together, and our distinct personalities were forced to interact. In a larger setting we would have never had the chance to get to know each other, but J.V. Humphries has given us the opportunity to make diverse friendships.
Our class is reflective of Kaslo itself, a small community filled with vastly divergent people, all of whom have different opinions on almost every subject, and as we can see from the Kaslo Community web Facebook page these opinions are not often withheld. The end result could be a catastrophe, but somehow it just works, and so does our class.
The 14 individuals before you are unique, and so are their futures. It is finally time for us to make our own decisions, and to discover who we are, and this will be done in 14 entirely different ways. Our high school experience has been full of hoops to jump through, twists, bends, cliffs and the occasional flat stretch to catch our breath. Thankfully we all had the support of our peers, parents and teachers, although they made it abundantly clear that our hands would no longer be held in high school, they never really let go. As we begin our transition remember this, in the wise words of JK Rowling (of course I was going to incorporate something related to Harry Potter), “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”
We are now faced with endless options, with little to no idea of how to take advantage of them. The end of school has been the light at the end of the tunnel for our entire adolescence, now that it’s here it is not as bright as it once appeared. It has been dimmed with the prospect of responsibilities, and the pressure of knowing what you want to be. The world we are entering is a strange one. Personally I am still trying to wrap my head around the United States’ choice to elect Donald Trump. Having a president with a more trivial Twitter feed than my own is something I will never understand.. The world is looming, but I know we can handle anything that comes at us. We did survive English with Mrs. Holland after all.
We are leaving JVH with an identity we have carried through high school. Now that we have finished, we are faced with the option of becoming something new; to start fresh, and design a new path. To quote William Shakespeare, “We know what we are, but not what we may be.” Who knows what our futures may hold, and who we will become. Only time will tell, and I am excited to see where life takes us all.
Now let’s enjoy our newfound freedom, before the English Provincial, and our inexorable adult responsibilities.
Congratulations to the graduating class of 2018; we accomplished this milestone, let’s let our futures begin. In reference to the movie Caddyshack, “In the immortal words of Jean-Paul Sartre. Au revoir.”
Thank you.
Read L.V. Rogers’ valedictory address by Tyler Lakeman at nelsonstar.com.