Read the 2015 Valedictorian and Salutatorian Speeches

The valedictorians of the Class of 2015 are Christiane Petitbon and Tiffany Yochum.


CHRISTIANE PETITBON

Good evening.
I’d like to begin with some thought provoking words from the loved by many Disney movie Hercules:
 
“I will find my way, I can go the distance
I'll be there someday - If I can be strong
I know every mile will be worth my while
I would go most anywhere to feel like I belong."

Congratulations, Macs. We did it. We went the distance and sit here tonight in our stark white dresses under the beaming stage lights ready to continue forward. All of our dedication and hard work throughout high school has prepared us for what is to come. However, there are a few people without whom none of this – our futures – would have been possible. I believe a few thanks are owed. Thank you, families, for being open minded and providing the perfect, and sometimes unusual, guidance in all we do. Parents, thank you for always having our backs and constantly telling us that all you wanted was our best. Thank you, faculty, staff, Ursuline sisters, and administration for the copious amounts of support and aid throughout all of our years at Ursuline. Special thanks to Mr. Walters for the many bell rings, the new perspectives – such as finding “unholy grails, goblets made of lead pipes” – and the ever-inspiring “make money, money make”; to Ms. Meyers for playing “Lean On Me” at ring Mass and continuing to play – smiling – when the whole class didn’t know the verses and sang “la” every other word; to Miss Norton for waiting and reminding us to “stay safe and make good choices” (look where we are now); to Mr. Baynham for all of the “ha-cha”s and “ha-choo”s; and to Mrs. Mortillaro for approving scooters as a class prank – what a fun time. Lastly, thank you, classmates. You are the broken pieces of bleacher left after Rally. Alone, you are all unique in size and strength. Together, you transform into something capable of supporting masses, always holding me up on your shoulders, no sweat.

About a week ago, I laid in bed wondering just what exactly I could say to a group of such inspirational women. What message could I leave you about the future? What moment would trigger the perfect speech? Then, I realized there is no one singular moment. No one thing that has happened would be enough to encompass the many memories I've shared with all of you throughout our time together. Similarly, it would be unfair to pinpoint one single thing that defines us. We are a diverse class, and it is in our diversity that our beauty shines through, noticed by all. However, it is sometimes the unnoticed things in life that leave the greatest impact.
This point didn't really hit me until one day in Miss Norton's class when analyzing the commencement speech "This is Water." In it, David Foster Wallace speaks of an old fish swimming alongside two young fish. The old fish casually asks: "[H]ow's the water?" As the young fish continue swimming, one asks the other: "What’s water?" In life, we get so caught up in the minor details or the happenings of the present moment that we often forget to pause a moment and notice all that surrounds us. What surrounds us are the building blocks of our futures – all unique, yet all intertwined because of past experiences we've shared at Ursuline. Likewise, as we continue on our different paths, we’re all interconnected. The future is anything past the present moment. This speech was the future, is now the present, and soon will be the past. So it goes. What we make of the future will be our realities. Yes, there are unexpected challenges, but that is what makes life interesting. It is these obstacles that trigger new ideas, send us on new adventures, or have us wanting to escape so badly that we use our school skirts as a rope and find freedom.

So, what is your water? Is your glass half empty or half full? Pocahontas sung: “The water’s always changing always flowing.” The future is ever changing, meaning it is up to us to influence the outcome. What lies ahead contains many unknowns. The territory we are about to enter is unfamiliar, yet filled with so many exciting opportunities. I challenge you to find the smallest, most unnoticed things and see just how spectacularly they influence your lives, how far they progress you on your paths to success. The future comes one day at a time, so you have many chances, and mistakes are inevitable. With regards to the many changes the future holds, it is how we react to these changes that defines what we become. Unfortunately, there’s only 24 hours in the day – no more, no less. So make the most of them and don’t take a second for granted.

Thank you.


TIFFANY YOCHUM

So it’s all come down to this.
I admit, I had very little faith in my ever getting here; I’ve been waiting for graduation day in the same manner that people wait to become millionaires: sure, it’s possible, but the possibility is one in a million. It was more than likely, it always seemed, that the day would never come. The idea of this graduation, in short, was purely hypothetical; I don’t think any of us seriously thought we’d be here. (I know I didn’t.)
But we are. Life’s funny like that.

I’ll start, as is fitting, with thank yous. I would like to thank all the mothers and fathers for their time and their generosity and their patience. I’d like to thank all the grandmothers for their unthinkable time and effort and love. I’d like to thank the grandfathers as well, for their generosity and support and wisdom. Thank you to aunts, cousins, and uncles. Thank you to the siblings, to whom we’ve never given enough credit. Thanks to every teacher who I have plagued endlessly and with whom I have argued just for the sheer sake of arguing; they have all put up with it marvelously well. Thank you to the administration for all of their guidance and support and to the UA sisters.

I can honestly say I wouldn’t be here without you.

I am to speak on the present. How does one do that? I guess I’ll begin with a definition; C.S. Lewis, in his Screwtape Letters, tells us that the present is the moment where Time touches Eternity. Common sense tells us that it’s the only epoch of the three (past, present, future) that you can do anything about. The past is unalterable and the future is untouchable; we as human beings can only affect the present.  What this means is that I won’t, as originally planned, talk about the tests we’ve taken, the fun we’ve had, or the ways we’ve changed. That’s the Past, after all, and Katie’s already talked about that. It also means that I really can’t, with good conscience, prattle on about where I think we’ll be in 10 years or all of my hopes for the future; that’s the future, and Christiane has already discussed that. This seems to exhaust most of the conversational topics one would associate with a valedictorian speech: so what do I say?

Theodore Roosevelt, a man of whom I must reluctantly confess my deepest admiration, once said: “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” That’s some advice we could use every day of our lives, as we fret over complications that haven’t materialized and failed tests we haven’t failed. We don’t do it enough. Take high school, for example: eighth grade rolls around and we are warned about keeping our grades up for college. Then we’re juniors, and we start taking AP to knock some of those college courses out of the way early, borrowing the future for the now. Then senior year, and suddenly we’re expected to know the ins and outs of our flawless and lucrative career as we’re sitting in high school math. But what about right now? What about this moment, in this room?  That's what people have such a hard time focusing on; we’re all too busy waiting for things to happen to them to actually make anything happen.

I suppose the whole point of this speech is to tell myself and my class to go. To get moving. To do it now. Dr. Seuss warns us all of that “most useless place, the Waiting place;” don’t get stuck there. We’re a great class; we can do so, so much, if we just stop marking it on our calendars and go do it. Let’s not, for this one moment, think about college and our classes and the clubs and sororities we’re going to find there. Let’s focus, for this one moment, on being here, on the supreme honor of graduating from this immensely historic school, on being in these gorgeous white dresses that made us stand stiff and motionless. Let’s focus not only on where we are, but what we want: our dreams and our aspirations. Those are not “someday” concerns; that is, they don’t have to be. We can do them now, today. We just have to stand up and walk out of the waiting room.

Thank you.

The salutatorian of the Class of 2015 is Miss Katherine Jones.

KATHERINE JONES

Good evening and thank-you for celebrating this exciting day with our class. I remember the first time I thought about what it would be like to be a senior. I was in elementary school and had seen for the first time the senior’s decorations for Rally day. My class saw the breeze way adorned with Mac colored streamers during recess. The entire class was so excited to see our colors displayed and began to march around the playground as if we were the seniors themselves.  Then, the class beneath us began to tear down the decorations; this started the class rivalry that still exists today. Of course we were upset; they were tearing down our decorations. Then we realized the streamers weren’t really our decorations; they belonged to the seniors, the class that was really the leaders of the school. At that moment, I couldn’t wait till the day I was a senior and my class had our own decorations. Obviously, I had to wait. From the beginning of my Ursuline career, I have waited 16 years for today. Now it is here and it is unbelievable that we’ve finally made it. And with this accomplishment, we have realized what we are leaving behind by having encountered so many lasts:

•    Our last rally, where we got to have a great time remembering the times we’ve had together through our theme, Mac-packing Through the Years. I also finally got my decorations.
•    Our last day of being Ursuline students, a title that has defined me my entire life
•    And finally, the last time our class will truly be together again.
Through experiencing these lasts, I get to remember the times that Ursuline has been home to many of my firsts:
•    my first day ever of school when I started here in Toddler 2s
•    my first homework and test assignments, which I was actually excited about because these things meant I was finally a big girl
•    I lost my first tooth here and even ate my first Caesar salad here.
•    And last but definitely not least, this is the place where I met, for the first time, my best friends, the people who made the experience so memorable

Being a product of an Ursuline education, I can testify to how much it has shaped me as a person. Throughout my years here, I learned how to be courteous, loyal, and courageous. I’m also pretty familiar with serviam. Along with teaching us these qualities, Ursuline has encouraged us to look up to the older girls when we were little, and later to the women who make up Ursuline history. We’ve been given examples of trailblazer women such as St. Angela, who first began educating women in 1535, and the 12 Ursulines who travelled across the ocean to an unknown world to start our school in 1727. Through examples of strong women in our school’s past, Ursuline has taught us and expects us to be the new era of leaders and barrier breakers, whether we are setting examples as the senior Mac class did for me so long ago or we are making significant world changes like our foundress. In other words taken from our class’s favorite song “Allstar” by Smashmouth, we are encouraged to be the shooting stars that break the mold.

So now I would like to thank everyone here in attendance:
•    All of the parents for always supporting and encouraging us
•    All of the siblings for being examples of how to (and sometimes how not) to behave
•    All of the grandparents, aunts, uncles, godparents, and anyone else who devote their time to spending it with us and all of the relatives and friends who have travelled, whether they’ve come from across the city, state, country, or even world, to be with us today

I would also like to thank the faculty, staff, administration, Ursuline sisters, and anyone else who played a part in putting this on. And finally, my class for being the people with whom I’ve made so many memories. I wouldn’t want to share this stage with anyone else.

Thank you and congratulations Class of 2015!
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