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xaaraRough draft of my valedictory address, mostly for my reference, though if you have comments/criticism, I'd love to hear from you. Can't ever have too many opinions.
Afraid it's a little choppy toward the end, not sure how to thread community theme throughout, work on the preachiness and repetition in the last third. Need better greeting. Maybe more humor to break up the middle? Better segue to poem at the end.
Parents, teachers, administration, guests, and graduating class of 2005.
Over the past seventeen years, I have learned the following about myself: when I’m happy, I whistle; when I’m alone, I sing; when I’m bored, I chew on pens; and when I’m in an strange or uncomfortable place, I find the nearest public restroom and hide. I’ve become familiar with the interiors of bathrooms at fancy dinners, Library of Congress poetry readings, and various government buildings. I’ve memorized the blue-and-green tile pattern on the floor of the bathroom in the National Museum of Natural History, and the grey rectangles that herringbone through the George Washington University restrooms.
On my first day at School Without Walls, I did not see the interior of the bathroom. I never had an opportunity to become nervous and retreat—no one gave me time to decide that perhaps I would rather take shelter and wait for the passing of the storm. People I met within minutes of arriving introduced themselves, warned me to watch for falling structural elements, directed me to class, and invited me to lunch. People I met within minutes of arriving had already afforded me a support network that I would value for the rest of my time at Walls.
As a school, we are an island. We float amid a sea of GW students, exchange our space for theirs, barter for classrooms and auditoriums. We take the Metro or drive to school, to borrowed sports fields, to science laboratories and museums. Walls does not have a neighborhood; we cannot play pickup games on a nearby field or host an afterschool block party. As a result, we have formed here in downtown Washington a community based on self-sufficiency.
We have united as might the survivors of a shipwreck. The ancient buildings that house DC Public Schools crumble around students. Teachers flee the school system. Superintendents have a repetitive tendency to come and go. Somehow, we have managed not only to survive but to take from these circumstances an education that defies content standards and curricula
In a conversation I had a few weeks ago, one of my teachers said that no matter how small the colleges we attend, their size will dwarf Walls. In all likelihood, their freshman classes will dwarf the size of Walls. Despite the fact that many of us have grown up in cities, the numbers of students at other schools must by their very mass intimidate us. We will be lost. We will be lonely. I will write home about the restroom décor.
But then our ability to fend for ourselves will necessitate a return to our oldest tradition: taking what we have and making the absolute best of it.
I think often that we do not value what we take from this school and from those that preceded it. We, to a young man or woman, know how to read. We can write with clarity and focus. We can understand and apply at least the basics of higher mathematics. We have found amid the chaos that is public school an avenue to learning unavailable to many of our fellow students.
The public elementary and middle schools here in Washington often form the core of vibrant communities; their educational philosophies concentrate upon ideas about learning as a hands-on activity. They should offer their students an intensive holistic education.
They don't.
A disconcerting number of the students just a few years younger than us are barely literate. Word problems do nothing but frustrate them. When they enter ninth grade, they will not have read the standard literature; they will fall further and further behind until they drop out.
Probably, I make too grim a prediction. Many of the students will succeed, will make it in the world, will publish books late in their lives about how the difficulty of their childhoods made them who they are today.
A boy I know has been told by the adults in his life that he can be whatever he wants to be. You can be a doctor, they tell him, you can be a rap artist or a politician. They bring him to career fairs and set him loose with a dozen of his eighth-grade classmates. The world dazzles him, and his dreams overflow with the glitter of fame and fortune, fast women and faster cars.
When he tries to describe this future to me, however, he stumbles. He lacks the vocabulary to convey the image of his ideal house or his ideal partner; he falls back upon the sullen reticence that has served him so well in the past. "Big," he tells me. "My house will be big." Yes, his house will be big, his woman skinny, his car fast, his life fun. Bland adjectives, bland to match his vague ideas. And so he abandons those ideas in frustration at his inability to express them.
We, as students who graduate from this school with opportunities that many of our peers will never have, have an obligation to pass our education onto those who come after us.
This is not to say that we all need to become teachers. We can show our dedication to bringing along a generation of intelligent, well-educated students in myriad ways. If you speak another language, tutor it in college. Organize a calculus fair or a weekly open mic. Ask the questions everyone else shies from. Find your niche and build your community there.
Above all, always demand the why.
I can offer very little in the way of advice. What I've learned under two decades consists largely of "Look both ways before you cross the street" and "Count your change." And so I turn to a poem by James Wright, entitled "A Blessing."
A Blessing.
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
Thank you.
Afraid it's a little choppy toward the end, not sure how to thread community theme throughout, work on the preachiness and repetition in the last third. Need better greeting. Maybe more humor to break up the middle? Better segue to poem at the end.
Parents, teachers, administration, guests, and graduating class of 2005.
Over the past seventeen years, I have learned the following about myself: when I’m happy, I whistle; when I’m alone, I sing; when I’m bored, I chew on pens; and when I’m in an strange or uncomfortable place, I find the nearest public restroom and hide. I’ve become familiar with the interiors of bathrooms at fancy dinners, Library of Congress poetry readings, and various government buildings. I’ve memorized the blue-and-green tile pattern on the floor of the bathroom in the National Museum of Natural History, and the grey rectangles that herringbone through the George Washington University restrooms.
On my first day at School Without Walls, I did not see the interior of the bathroom. I never had an opportunity to become nervous and retreat—no one gave me time to decide that perhaps I would rather take shelter and wait for the passing of the storm. People I met within minutes of arriving introduced themselves, warned me to watch for falling structural elements, directed me to class, and invited me to lunch. People I met within minutes of arriving had already afforded me a support network that I would value for the rest of my time at Walls.
As a school, we are an island. We float amid a sea of GW students, exchange our space for theirs, barter for classrooms and auditoriums. We take the Metro or drive to school, to borrowed sports fields, to science laboratories and museums. Walls does not have a neighborhood; we cannot play pickup games on a nearby field or host an afterschool block party. As a result, we have formed here in downtown Washington a community based on self-sufficiency.
We have united as might the survivors of a shipwreck. The ancient buildings that house DC Public Schools crumble around students. Teachers flee the school system. Superintendents have a repetitive tendency to come and go. Somehow, we have managed not only to survive but to take from these circumstances an education that defies content standards and curricula
In a conversation I had a few weeks ago, one of my teachers said that no matter how small the colleges we attend, their size will dwarf Walls. In all likelihood, their freshman classes will dwarf the size of Walls. Despite the fact that many of us have grown up in cities, the numbers of students at other schools must by their very mass intimidate us. We will be lost. We will be lonely. I will write home about the restroom décor.
But then our ability to fend for ourselves will necessitate a return to our oldest tradition: taking what we have and making the absolute best of it.
I think often that we do not value what we take from this school and from those that preceded it. We, to a young man or woman, know how to read. We can write with clarity and focus. We can understand and apply at least the basics of higher mathematics. We have found amid the chaos that is public school an avenue to learning unavailable to many of our fellow students.
The public elementary and middle schools here in Washington often form the core of vibrant communities; their educational philosophies concentrate upon ideas about learning as a hands-on activity. They should offer their students an intensive holistic education.
They don't.
A disconcerting number of the students just a few years younger than us are barely literate. Word problems do nothing but frustrate them. When they enter ninth grade, they will not have read the standard literature; they will fall further and further behind until they drop out.
Probably, I make too grim a prediction. Many of the students will succeed, will make it in the world, will publish books late in their lives about how the difficulty of their childhoods made them who they are today.
A boy I know has been told by the adults in his life that he can be whatever he wants to be. You can be a doctor, they tell him, you can be a rap artist or a politician. They bring him to career fairs and set him loose with a dozen of his eighth-grade classmates. The world dazzles him, and his dreams overflow with the glitter of fame and fortune, fast women and faster cars.
When he tries to describe this future to me, however, he stumbles. He lacks the vocabulary to convey the image of his ideal house or his ideal partner; he falls back upon the sullen reticence that has served him so well in the past. "Big," he tells me. "My house will be big." Yes, his house will be big, his woman skinny, his car fast, his life fun. Bland adjectives, bland to match his vague ideas. And so he abandons those ideas in frustration at his inability to express them.
We, as students who graduate from this school with opportunities that many of our peers will never have, have an obligation to pass our education onto those who come after us.
This is not to say that we all need to become teachers. We can show our dedication to bringing along a generation of intelligent, well-educated students in myriad ways. If you speak another language, tutor it in college. Organize a calculus fair or a weekly open mic. Ask the questions everyone else shies from. Find your niche and build your community there.
Above all, always demand the why.
I can offer very little in the way of advice. What I've learned under two decades consists largely of "Look both ways before you cross the street" and "Count your change." And so I turn to a poem by James Wright, entitled "A Blessing."
A Blessing.
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
Thank you.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-30 06:24 pm (UTC)I feel special, getting a sneak preview of your speech. I get to know exactly what you're going to say weeks in advance, how cool is that? :)
Love it, and I told you that everyone does the bathroom thing!