Graduation Speech

Well, here we are at last, many of us much to our own surprise. When I started high school graduation seem like a daunting goal, something that was out of my grasp. But as Thomas Edison once said "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.", and nobody here gave up, you should all take great pride in that fact. The only thing more trying than failure, is mustering up the courage to persist until you succeed.

Although, we often can't succeed on just raw effort, and that is where our school comes in, and where most traditional high schools fall short. Everyone here has had obstacles to overcome that put them where they are. some of us have scheduling conflicts that make normal school attendance impossible, for others Mclain is our last chance to buckle down and succeed when we recognise we've messed up enough for one lifetime. I think it is also important to emphasise the point that most of us didn't fail traditional high school, but rather high school failed us - but none of us ever stopped trying, and it eventually paid off. I always had trouble trying to learn anything in a room full of clamoring teenagers, where getting the teacher's attention is always a competition. Mclain is a melting pot, who's students and teachers come from all different walks of life, and where the options for learning are as diverse as the people.

But as with most things these struggles are all in the past, we should keep all of these experiences, to reminisce about the good, and learn from the bad, while always looking toward the future. There is an old quote by Confucius, which states "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." I'm confident that all of my peers who are sitting before me today will be successful in all their endeavours, because I know we have all mastered the art of standing, and forging ahead when we fall. In retrospect, though I don't know many of you, our common struggles make us kin. And so, my comrades, in the interest of looking toward the future I leave you with this final quote, by a man some of you may have heard of, his name is Michael Jordan, and he says, "If it turns out that my best wasn't good enough, at least I won't look back and say that I was afraid to try; failure makes me work even harder."
Thank you all, and good luck.