- Unsurprisingly following her heart straight to Chilis, Kate Seabrook said, “In the future I will marry my own Derek Shepherd and live out my days working at Chili’s and building an underground Crocs empire with Emma.”
- Robert Weaver kept things simple… and frightening, saying: “In the future I will dominate the world.”
- Carson Moriarity set the bar high, asserting: “In the future I will try to be on time to class for a week straight.
Griffin Hancock pointed out what is true I am certain for many of his classmates when he wrote: “In the future I don’t know what I’ll do.” While I know that Griffin may have simply gone quickly through a Senior survey when he answered that question, his statement about the future doesn’t worry me. Very few of us have a vision of the future that works out the way we envisioned anyway. I worry more if someone doesn’t have any sense of what type of person he or she wishes to become, or a sense of the general areas where he or she would like to make the community better, or a sense of where he or she will draw strength when he or she suffers loss.When I was a senior in High School, I thought that adulthood was a kind of destination—a place one arrives, a train station at the end of a line where I would exit with luggage full of knowledge and understanding that then would remain somewhat the same for the rest of my life. I was deeply incorrect. The best learning you have done here revealed to you that learning is lifelong and that learning more is a responsibility, a responsibility to yourself, to those who have invested so fully in you, and to the communities where you will live and work.
“The best learning you have done here revealed to you that learning is lifelong and that learning more is a responsibility, a responsibility to yourself, to those who have invested so fully in you, and to the communities where you will live and work.”
In the future you will go to amazing places, you will make great things happen, you will suffer disappointments (and you will rise above them). You will meet people who positively impact you and change the trajectory of your life. You will study things that challenge you to reimagine some of what you thought you knew. You will love and sacrifice for people you have not yet met. At each juncture you will learn more, you will understand more fully, and, I hope, you will appreciate more deeply the gifts you have been given in your education.So much that you have learned at St. George’s will help you answer the questions: Who do you want to be? How would you like to leave the places you will live and work better for your presence? And finally: To what beliefs will you hold tightly when the losses that inevitably visit our lives come calling? Even as you go far away, know that you can’t leave St. George’s—it is now part of who you are and who you will be, and you are a permanent part of the fabric of this rare school as well.Thank you, Class of 2018—we will miss you and hope you return often.
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