Valedictorian Speech: Sarah Kate Lane-Reticker

Avon High graduate and valedictorian Sarah Kate Lane-Reticker may have been humble about giving advice to her fellow peers, but she had a captive audience at the Class of 2012's graduation Friday on the high school football field.

Tell us your favorite part in the comments! Also share your advice for the graduates.

Lane-Reticker provided Avon Patch with the transcript of her speech:

So first off, may I just say, I have no idea why they’re making me give a speech. Just because someone is good at school doesn’t mean she is a good person, has common sense, or knows anything about life. And valedictorians are most definitely not funny. But I still have to stand up here and talk for 5 minutes, so here goes.

Last summer, a lot of us went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II when it came out in theatres. Of course, it was fabulous, but it was also a very strange experience, and I know other people felt the same. Walking out of the theatre, I got this sort of numb, lost feeling – “I can’t believe this is over. My childhood is gone. What am I going to do with my life?” Since first grade I had been waiting for each new book as it came out, each new movie, and then in 2 hours and 10 minutes (I had to look that up so maybe I’m not such a great Harry Potter fan as I thought I was) it was finished. Done forever.

Now, you’re probably all thinking, “Oh, now she’s going to draw a comparison between high school and Harry Potter, and talk about how she can’t believe it’s finally graduation, and maybe say that it’s time to stop living in a fantasy world and start adjusting for the real world, that we now have to find a new meaning to life.” No. Absolutely not. There is no way I would ever compare Avon High School to Harry Potter. Believe me, I wish I went to a school where we could practice magic, fly on broomsticks, keep owls as pets to deliver the mail, and battle Voldemort and the Death Eaters, but I do not. Instead, I practiced physics problems to no avail, my sport consisted of running around in circles on the track, our pet chickens could barely find their way into the coop each night, and the only people I battled were my teachers to move their tests back a day.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Much as we might like to, most of us don’t actually live in an epic tale where we regularly confront the forces of evil and do great things to save our world. I know that it is customary at events like this to talk about how the future is ours, to say that maybe we will find a cure for cancer or solve world hunger, and perhaps we will. But in between our superhero moments, we’re going to have to have day jobs and live our everyday mundane Muggle lives.

When I was younger, I think I spent half my time terrified that every new law, every economic downturn, every new outbreak of some disease was going to destroy or at least radically alter life as I knew it. Remember swine flu a couple years ago? Remember how they told us in 3rd grade, “You had better learn cursive now, because when you get to Thompson Brook you’re going to have to write EVERYTHING in cursive, and if you don’t your teachers will automatically give you a zero.”? But we didn’t die of swine flu, I have never written a paper in cursive, and life pretty much goes on. Or, in the words of my physics teacher’s favorite song, Let It Be.

So, after that nice 2-minute tangent, I would like to return to standing outside the theatre last summer, wondering what would become of my life. There would never be another new Harry Potter EVER. But obviously I survived, and you’re probably wondering, how on earth did I cope? Well, of course, I went back and re-read the books, watched all the movies over again. And while they didn’t end any differently than last time, I enjoyed them just as much and possibly even a bit more. I wasn’t thinking about what might happen next, worrying about pushing on to the next chapter.

I’m sure many of us can’t even count the times people have asked us over the past few years, “Where are you going to college? What are you going to study? What do you want to do?” Students like us are expected to go to college, so we can get a good job, so we can make money, be comfortable, maybe have a family, maybe save the world, grow old, retire, and die. We’re always pushing on to the next thing, the bridge to our ultimate goal of – what? When do we actually start living our “real” lives?

Well, we’re kind of in the middle of them. And the things that matter to us now are never going to stop mattering to us, because life is really just the sum of all those little moments that make us laugh or cry, the people that we meet and talk to and connect with.

And unfortunately, life is also the things that make us yawn, so I’m going to wrap this up now. I would like to apologize to the people who were expecting me to do something original (in other words, completely ridiculous), give a shout-out to my family and grandparents, and to the girls’ cross-country team, thanks for voting. Finally, to my class, it’s been wonderful knowing you. We survived high school, so let the next round of the Games begin, and may the odds be ever in your favor.