I was honored this year, to be able to speak in front of my graduating class as valedictorian. This is the speech I gave. It is by biggest accomplishment to date. Now, I am setting my sights higher than ever to become a distinguished writer.
I’d like to start off by saying how honored I am to stand in front of all of you tonight. At this point, having reached graduation, we have accomplished a goal that we have worked years to conquer. There were hard times, and fun times, and really memorable times. And now we are here. This will not be our last success, or our last accomplishment. More goals will come, and there will be more struggles.
Our class quote, “A bend in the road is not the end of the road, unless you fail to make the turn;” is something I hope we will all keep in mind every day after today. Tonight, I want to tell you a story. When you are seeking for courage or the will to move along, I hope this story will help you.
My story starts in my freshman year. That year started as normal as anyone’s, I cheered for the football team at the pep assembly at my school and rooted them on at the game. But, not long after homecoming my high school life got a little complicated. I had way more absences than I could handle, and just as many health issues.
I had a few surgeries between freshman, sophomore, and junior year. Those surgeries resulted in too many days to fall behind on my school work. I spent most of my high school years doing this program called homebound. A teacher would come to my house twice a week and help me with school work, the rest of the time I would work on everything by myself. This wasn’t as wonderful as it may seem. Books started to pile up, and the stress came right along with it.
It was the biggest battle of my life, to date. There came a time when I never thought I could reach graduation. For a while I thought about dropping out. I kept my thoughts to myself as I slowly slaved through my work at home.
Finally I couldn’t handle it anymore. My struggles were taking over my life, socially, physically, and mentally. School assignments had become the one and only thing I could do. I couldn’t justify going to do fun things, because I should have been working on school work. Then I would make myself stay home and work, even if I was too confused to get any further in my assignments, and I would make myself miserable. I was not getting any closer to getting my diploma working from home during that time. I was only making myself sicker than each day before, sick with stress and desire.
When I finally voiced my wishes of dropping out of high school, I cried with my mom about the struggles we had been through the past two years. She kept telling me that I was too good to drop out, and that I hadn’t worked as hard as I did just to give it all up. My family and friends begged me to look into alternatives
The people in my life advised me in ways that they probably never even knew helped. They helped me see that my hardships would not be in vein. Everyone told me that everything that had happened to me, was for a reason. My family would tell me that I was stronger than I believed I was, and that I could make it through anything. By giving me confidence, they helped me take the leap to change schools.
When I went into the meeting with Pat, I was nervous out of my wits. I hadn’t been in school in months, and I didn’t know anyone that was there. Through the whole meeting, I felt like an emotional wreck because I didn’t know where this would take me and I was truly scared to take this chance.
After my mom, Pat and I talked, things moved so quickly that I could see no way to back out. Pat quickly took me into Alyson’s room to take my placement test, and that was that. Pat said I could come back Monday and start classes. It really was bewildering to me that something that was so very complicated in my mind, was so uncomplicated here.
In my year at the Alt Ed, I have learned so much more than the education I needed to graduate.
I learned from the teachers that their job wasn’t just a job. Every day I came to school, it was hugely apparent how much the teachers cared about helping each an every one of us graduate. They all had different ways of getting us here, but whatever they did must have helped a little.
I learned from the students that labels and perception really don’t mean much. The people I went to school with were good people. We all went to school for the same goal, to make it to graduation one day. That’s the best part of the Alt Ed, is that each student has to show enough initiative to pass.
I learned that taking a chance can bring many successes. If I hadn’t had the courage to take a chance on this Alternative school, I honestly couldn’t tell you where I would be today. I definitely wouldn’t be giving a speech at graduation.
I learned a valuable life lesson from coming to this school. I learned that by making goals, and never giving up, I could do more than I thought I was capable of. I learned that sometimes even when you don’t want to hear it, the people you care about are really only trying to help. I learned that sometimes it is better to struggle and win, than to give up and wish you hadn’t. But I also learned that cutting my losses somewhere that I wasn’t succeeding can bring you to places you never knew existed.
I hope that you will remember something my mom told me recently, that “People get where they get for the strangest reasons.” . I hope you will know that sometimes it is okay to make mistakes, and learn from them. I hope you will trust yourself enough to make the right choices. I hope that you will continue to learn after today. And I hope that each road leads you where you want to go.
