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Valedictorian speech by Emily Giesbrecht.

Recounting the memories and moving forward
12547010_web1_Grad0613ValedicEmilyGiesbrecht

Hello parents, teachers, family, friends, and honoured guests.

My name is Emily Giesbrecht and I am the valedictorian for the Clearwater Secondary School Graduating Class of 2018.

I want to start off by saying that none of us grads would be up on this stage tonight without the help of our incredible parents and guardians.

You were patient with us when we went through our awkward, angsty phases, you drove us to countless practices, rehearsals, games, meetings, and fundraisers, you helped us with our homework and you talked us through our fights with our friends and the stresses of high school.

You forgave our many—and I mean many—mistakes, including that one time that some of us got an entire hotel evacuated at 2 a.m.

These tasks were not limited to our parents. I would also like to extend a massive thank you to the aunts, uncles, grandparents, and siblings of this class, we owe you all a round of applause.

We owe another thank you to our teachers and our principals who gave us the education that we need to either continue as students in post-secondary or to enter the workforce.

You took time after school to coach us in our favourite sports and to tutor us when we needed that little extra bit of help. We owe you another round of applause.

Twelve years ago, we started our first day of Kindergarten.

We were given cubbies to keep our super cool superhero and princess lunchboxes in, we learned to count and tie our shoes, and we met our best friends.

Elementary school went by in a blur, and by the time we were in Grade 7, we felt like we were on top of the world.

We were the big kids who got to go on the skiing trip to Sun Peaks, and we went on our Grade 7 field trip, where we all learned the correct way to hold a glow stick.

Not long after, we finished Grade 7 and looked ahead to highschool with excitement and a fair amount of fear and anxiety.

The first day of Grade 8 arrived, and for a solid month afterwards, we moved through the school in a wide-eyed huddle, like a bunch of awkward penguins.

As we made our way through Grade 8, we became more comfortable, so comfortable, in fact, that we began to treat the classrooms like our own bathrooms, with one of our grads taking a quick shower in the emergency shower during Grade 8 science class.

At least we know that it works. We made our way through Grades 9 and 10, continuing to learn from our classes and each other.

When we hit Grade 11, it started to sink in for many of us that grad was approaching, but it still seemed like something that would never happen.

Then came the beginning of Grade 12, along with grad meetings and application deadlines for university and scholarships.

We scrambled to get our scholarship applications in by 9 o’clock on May 1st because we kept saying to ourselves, “Oh I have like all of April to do it,” then suddenly it was 11:30 at night on April 30th and none of us knew how that happened.

Then there was the grad trip to go on, where we learned another important lesson; if you pull the heat sensor out of the wall in your hotel room, you will get the entire Super 8 evacuated at 2 in the morning, but if you write them enough nice things on Tripadvisor, they might not charge you for it.

Next up was the grad cutoff to make, courses to pass, and now, here we all are.

We are graduating high school when it seems like just yesterday we were in Grade 8 and looking up at those Grade 12s and thinking that they were such adults and had their lives completely together. But of course, that would be us once we reached that grade.

We would be able to drive and we would graduate and be grown ups, but that will never happen anyways. Sike.

Here we are up on this stage, in front of our friends and families, and I know that I personally do not feel in the slightest like the adult that I thought that I would.

But, though we may not feel entirely ready, we have the lessons that we learned in school, and more importantly, from each other.

As we move forward in life, whether it is to university, work, or wherever life takes us, we will always have the knowledge and memories that we gained from the years that we spent together as a class, both inside and out of school.

So without any further ado, let’s remember the lessons we learned, and look back fondly on our memories, and let’s see where life takes us.

Thank you.



newsroom@clearwatertimes.com

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