Schools

Amity High Graduation Speech: Jacqueline Taylor Duhl

Jaqueline Duhl was honored for academic achievement and was chosen by her teachers and her peers to speak at graduation.

They all smell the same on the first day: that bouncy, resilient rubber, wafting from the soles of every new Sperry, Birkenstock, Ugg, sneaker, and construction boot. The argument always ensued a week before the first day of school.

“They are too expensive,” my mom would say as I tried on my fifth pair of sneakers. “No, I promise I will wear them all year. I’ll be the fastest girl in gym!” I would say while enamored with that new shoe smell. Every year was a new investment.

The time our shoes have spent walking the halls of Amity during our 5 minute passing time adds up to 37 minutes, a little less than the length of one class period per day. We are here today to prove something: that we passed that four-year-long class.

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Now, let me tell you; that is not an easy task. These are the halls in which we have learned our biggest lessons, and also made some of our biggest mistakes. This is the class in which you pick your own level, your own groups, and your own grade.

You see, what makes us students is the fact that we have the opportunity to be whoever we want to be during passing time. What makes us Amity students is that who we choose to be doesn’t matter. The fact that we want to be someone does. Passing time has given us the opportunity to conduct individual experiments and the ability to form our own groups to do so. We are the individuals from which unbridled curiosity and creativity pour out in our individual journeys from Biology to Latin. From manufacturing to choir. From lunch to study hall. Our research is not in proving life’s truths, but in reducing its untruths.

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There is no one way to connect to and from any wing—we each find the passion and ambition to do so individually. Our zeal lies not in the definitive answer, but in the hope of new questions and better pathways to test.

 The new shoes from the first day of school were worthwhile investments: they helped us to dart around new corners, were on our feet when we ran into new people, and helped us bounce back up when we fell down. The ability to put shoes on our feet gave us the opportunity to march towards the unknown expanse of the world by understanding our immediate surroundings. We have proven that though we all have different shoes, we all have a common goal: to cross the boundaries set for us.

Freshman year I wanted to be a marine biologist, sophomore year a philosophy major, junior year an archaeologist that I later refined into an underwater archaeologist, and senior year a classics major combined with an engineering minor. We think high school is all about preparing you for the future and realizing what you want to do. And it is; but what did we major in during high school? Ourselves.

The navigation of Amity’s halls has given us the ability to do anything we set our minds to. Now, I might be an underwater archaeologist in the Aegean Sea with a minor in mathematical philosophy…it’s going to get me really far. We don’t have to know where we are going. We just have to know that we want to AND CAN go somewhere.

Amity has taught us that.

So thank you teachers, administration, board of education, families, and

taxpayers. I want you to know that your investments in our education go much farther than a new pair of shoes every year.

Your time, money, and encouragement have prepared us to take our final journey through the hallway and through the main entrance of Amity High School because we have learned to question, define, appreciate, and reform our world. Though we all will go our separate ways at the end of this ceremony, I ask you to remember this when you exchange your old shoes for new ones at the end of August: that though your shoes may change, the places you went, boundaries you crossed, and people you met here will always be with you. Now, it is our turn to invest in a new pair of shoes for the world. What kind do you think they should be?

Thank you.


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