2023 Salutatorian Address

This here is the result of the school year of 2022-2023. This here is the result of thirteen years of education. This here is the result of the lifetime. Behind me is the Class of 2023: seventeen individuals who have spent years toiling, labouring, all to stand here, having accomplished the impossible, that is, graduating from Ridgeview.

Each of those people has done more than most of them probably ever believed possible. They have shown intelligence when they, mostly, learned to read, and, mostly, learned to write (although not quite legibly), and, mostly, learned some amount of math. They have shown perseverance when they consistently came to school in the same out-of-dress code jacket, the same pair of bright blue crocs, the same blue flannel. They have shown courage when they spent many hours of the late evening, of the early morning, of their lunch hour finishing that assignment they definitely should have started earlier. They have read some of the greatest books ever written. Unrelated, they have also read Moby Dick. They have learned that PV always equals nRT, that every force does indeed have an equal and opposite reaction, that Napoleon really liked bees. They have climbed mountains. They have stood in front of crowds, presenting their thoughts to the world. Now they stand here, 111,522 hours and some odd minutes after their journey first began, having done all those things, graduating from Ridgeview.

I still have about two minutes of space to fill. There are many things I could talk about in those two minutes: I could talk about how much I have personally come in my journey at Ridgeview, how I have come from misspelling “Washington” every single time in an essay on George Washington and giving a speech barely audible to the front row to standing here and delivering this speech, I could quote Descartes and Aristotle, I could make fun of Ridgeview, afterall, what consequences do I have now? but I’m not going to do any of that. Instead, I’m going to tell a story.

The story I am going to tell is that of one little Hobbit going on an adventure, or, rather, seventeen little Hobbits going on seventeen adventures. Now, there is a point to me bringing up this story besides my love of Tolkien and need to reference a fantasy novel in everything I do. That point is that we are all, all seventeen of us, being sent out into a world much bigger than any of us and we all will do something with that opportunity. Some of us are little Bilbos, going out into that world simply to make something of ourselves. Some of us are little Frodos, being sent out into that world in order to make it a better place. None of us truly know the scale our adventure will take. Still, all of us know it will be something worth remembering in our own little red books (or navy blue books because it’s Ridgeview) with “There and Back Again” embossed on the cover in gold. And it all begins here, with the Class of 2023 graduating from Ridgeview.