Tess Stevens, Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School Class Speaker

To The Time of Your Life

Following is the prepared text of Tess Stevens' commencement speech Saturday.  

I remember sitting in front of my TV at my childhood home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, sippy cup to my right and coloring book to my left. I was watching Scooby Doo. I couldn’t wait to see what Scooby and the gang would do next. Maybe foil a sea monster, or maybe a ghost. My life centered on fictional characters, coloring and drinking juice from a cup that could never spill. That life changed, but I never thought about what it would be like to be a senior in high school.

Then Scooby Doo changed into Jersey Shore, coloring changed into Calculus and sippy cups changed into soda cans. I bet we all remember a time where we didn’t have a care in the world, but then our TI 80 Plus Silver Edition calculator punched us in the face. You see, high school is but a blip in the grand scheme of your life. People aren’t going to care if you were a cheerleader, or popular. They won’t care if you hung out with the nerds or the drama kids, but whoever you hang with or whatever you do in high school has changed you into the person you have become today.  So this address is for all of you who had bad experiences, no dates to dances, not the best grades, and to those who had the most awkward times. This address is also for the prom queens, the 4.0’s and the music masters. These times don’t have to define us, because our peak has not yet been reached. We have to grow and change, whether you can hit a baseball out of the park, can draw a perfect skeleton, or can play all of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar solos. Even if we weren’t on the cutting edge of fashion, or didn’t wear a size two and didn’t drink or smoke or even try to fit in. We’re not alone. We all have to graduate, move on and find our way in this crazy world. If we all continued to watch Scooby Doo and color than we’d be missing out on the changes and transitions from high school to the beyond. So let Scooby catch the ghost already and get on with your life!

Getting on with it is how most of us felt about high school. Groans of ‘aaahhh 4 more years”, and “I can’t believe I’m going to be stuck here” echoed throughout the halls freshman year undoubtedly hundreds of times a week. I remember sitting in algebra thinking how ridiculous that curriculum was. How I was never going to use it and how it was a big waste of time. I wanted out, so badly that I was about to jump out of Mrs. Ferrante’s 2nd story window (no offense, I’m just bad at math). But that longing to escape changed after a year of geometry. What I learned in algebra changed into something I could apply to geometry, and then math became easier. Now as a senior in Mrs.Crow’s class I didn’t want to jump out a window (partly because of the dire consequences, but also because, my mistakes in algebra didn’t take a hold of me as a person. We all have had tough classes and things that we didn’t feel comfortable with, but in the real world we can’t let these things get to us. We have to change. Forging onward and just getting through it can make all the difference.

Finding something you enjoy can also ease the pain of high school. For me, it was music and drama. Aside from being on the golf team, student council and various other activities I felt instantly at home in the music and drama departments. People of all shapes, sizes and colors can come together to make a song, or perform a play or musical. People who don’t feel comfortable in society can feel comfortable on stage. I don’t feel comfortable at dances, in social situations or parties, but I feel the prettiest, the smartest and the best on stage. For others this feeling of total euphoria could be sports, AP classes, art, collecting stamps or even knitting. I think by now most of us have figured out what we’re good at. In order to truly reach our potential in these areas it’s necessary to change into someone who is flexible and open-minded. If you still don’t know what you’re good at, you’re still not alone. Don’t rush your creativity. It’ll come to you.

But then again we all come to a point where we are just not good at something. Creativity falls, studying fails and people start to wonder why you’re even trying. My high school blunder was chemistry class. Because I’m an artist and not a scientist, chemistry with Mr.Youngs didn’t come easy. I remember hours of studying and struggling with flashcards, webassign and experiments gone awry, but honestly, all I remember is when he ate the chalk. There are some things in life that you just can’t get past, I tried as hard as I could to understand Avagadro and Mew and Lamda. I just didn’t have the capacity for it, but I passed the class, didn’t fail my midterm or final because I just stuck with it. No matter what happens in our lives, failed relationships, bad classes, roommates and jobs we have to stick with it. Because then, you’ll come out the other side alive, and maybe with a new passion.

Then, I think we all hit a big brick wall that even Newton and his laws couldn’t have avoided when we realized that senior year was coming. “Seniors! 2011!" seemed all fine and grand until we had to start making major life decisions. College. It seemed almost like a swear word to me. I didn’t want to think about leaving everything I had ever known. My friends, my  family and empire of accomplishments I had achieved. I had changed from a kid to an adult, and I was scared. But what I realized was we all have to leave something, our hometown, our friends even our family in order to do what is best for us. In order to leave the confines of our comfortable school we have to have some certainty within ourselves. We have to mature from prom drama to choosing a major.

 We have to as our wonderful new principal states weekly … daily … hourly …GBED or Get Better Every Day. We have to change from research papers to term papers and we have to change from present to future. The flotation devices given to us by our parents and our teachers will have to change into the skill of treading water. We won’t drown if we stay confident and use these tools.

So To all of those kids who will graduate without more than five kids knowing their name, those kids who will have to pay their college tuitions all on their own, to all of those kids who deal with grave injustices that even the most adults can’t cope with: things/will /change. You will change. People will change, because life doesn’t always fit like a little black dress. It has to evolve, but don’t forget that you’re always a sippy cup away from your childhood.

I’ve changed. We’ve all changed. We’ve all changed from Scooby to Snooki, Coloring books to Calculus and Sippy cups to soda. We’ve all endured Algebra, Chemistry, and the perils of realizing that your future is hitting you like a brick wall, but there will always be something you can do to make every day better. And as we separate, some of us for no time at all, and others for forever; we can look back through freshmen, sophomore, junior and now the end of our senior year as an experience full of changes and evolutions. Because making history will never go out of style, in order to become something bigger than ourselves, in order to make history we have to grow and mature. Maybe Scooby hasn’t caught the ghost, but eventually the ghosts of high school will fade in the light of your future. To the Class of 2011, Good Riddance, and Good Luck!