Below is the speech Michael Lu, the valedictorian for Great Neck South High School’s class of 2019, delivered at graduation, as submitted by the Great Neck Public Schools.
Administration, faculty, staff, guests, distinguished guests, undistinguished guests—you know who you are… siblings, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, greater-grandparents, alumni, and my fellow classmates. Congratulations, you’ve all made it—to the end of this ceremony. All that remains between you and summer vacation is this speech, which I plan to make as long as possible… You’re welcome.
You know, four years ago at Great Neck South, we started from the bottom. But now we’re here. In this school, we’ve experienced so much change; we’ve endured tragedy—such as the removal of the App Store on school iPads—and we’ve experienced triumph—such as student toilet paper going from quarter-Ply to half-Ply. In four years, our environment has transformed immensely. In addition, we, along with our aspirations, have likely changed as well.
I realized this when attempting to write this speech. After receiving the dreaded email that I was required to speak at graduation, I decided to tackle the task with the great work ethic that helped me survive high school, so I immediately began, at 2 a.m. last night with pencil, paper, and two cans of Red BullTM. To be honest, I was pretty desperate for scraps of inspiration, so I ended up consulting the middle school yearbook, and after looking through all the pictures of my classmates, and laughing at most of them, I found all the signatures at the back of the yearbook, and one stood out in particular:
“Dear Michael, though you are single, and will likely be for the rest of your life, your work as a physics guru and a communist is admired.” signed Stephen Xia.
Well… Four years later, I’m still single, but I’m not a communist, and after a year of physics with Mr. “HeWhoShallNotBeNamed”, I can safely say that the black magic known as physics is not my forte. It’s safe to say that I’ve changed a lot over the course of four years; in fact, we all have. We’ve given up braces, NokiaTM phones, bangs, and light up SketchersTM and acquired comb overs, and, for the lucky few, TimbsTM. For some of us, we’ve quit MinecraftTM and got hooked on FortniteTM. Instead of spreading butter on our breakfast toast, some of us now use avocados. And many of us have picked up an addiction to StarbucksTM coffee and Red BullTM. And finally, many of us are now part of the esteemed 1% because we own Airpods.
But we’ve also taken these four years to explore and eventually establish a foothold on a passion that we wish to pursue—whether it’s for art, science, athletics, engineering, or business. At this point, convention begs me to deliver the trite remarks, “Follow your dreams, you, future engineers, entrepreneurs, artists, lawyers…” But nah… I’m not gonna do that. Because the truth is, graduates, who we are today may not be who we are in another four years. We all remember how as freshmen, we’d sample ten different extracurriculars and then abandon eight and a half by the time we were seniors. Whether we continued with or quit DECA, Key Club, science research, robotics, track and field, or debate—the list goes on, it’s pretty likely that what we wanted to do in September of 2015 isn’t what we plan to do today. Similarly, what we plan to do today may not be what we plan to do when we graduate college. It’s common to realize how much we’ve changed in the past, but it’s less common to anticipate how much we will change in the future. Some of us who think we want to be engineers or doctors or artists right now may very well choose a different occupation in the future. Just as our aspirations may have transformed during high school, they could do the same in college.
Sure, the world is currently begging us to quickly find solutions to its many problems: climate change is getting worse, student debt is bigger and better than ever, and Iron Man is dead. It’s a scary world out there, one that needs fixing. However, we might not be “changing the world” in the next four years because we may be busy changing our goals. But there’s nothing wrong with taking a while to settle on a path that we’re truly passionate about, and more importantly, doing so doesn’t bar you from success. Take for instance a computer programmer on Wall Street who left his job to start an online sales company called Amazon. Or a young actor from Illinois who decided to become the 40th president of the United States. Or an Irish coffee farmer who decided to become an English teacher named Mr. Graham. We shouldn’t be afraid or ashamed of abandoning an old dream for a new one. Let’s not let our past constrict our future. Especially for young people like us, there’s enough time in life to switch our direction and still excel while contributing to society.
There’s no bigger cliché in a graduation speech than to “follow your dreams”, and while it’s not terrible advice, I feel like there’s much more to it. Class of 2019, in the next four years and in the many years after, let’s pursue our goals with determination but be willing to change them with conviction. It’s true that many of us can never be sure where we’ll end up in the future, but we shouldn’t be afraid of how our aspirations may switch course; we should embrace it, and follow them wherever they take us.
