‘Change is constant’ is theme at commencement after storm clears to allow families to watch as graduates get diplomas
LINWOOD — Ominously dark clouds spewed torrential rain early but gave way to overcast skies with rays of sun and a cool breeze for the Mainland Regional High School commencement ceremony June 16.
Led by faculty members in black robes, the 302 students garbed in green gathered on a soggy football field as their family and friends filled the bleachers and lined the fence of the Mustang Corral for the special event.
Class of 2023 President Eva Brozosky of Northfield welcomed those assembled, saying the day marks the end of some things but the beginning of so many others.
“Many people think of a graduation ceremony as celebrating a lot of ‘lasts’ — last time in high school, last time seeing teachers, last time being a kid. However, a graduation ceremony can also be seen as celebrating a lot of ‘firsts.’ For Mainland’s Class of 2023, this is our first time graduating high school. For most of the senior class, after graduation will be the first time we go out on our own, explore the world and make our own doctor’s appointments,” she told her fellow seniors.
Brozosky, who graduated summa cum laude, said the seniors could not have reached the milestone without the “guidance from the Mainland staff, support from our friends and love from our families. Thank you all for preparing us for such a big, bright, beautiful world.”
Olivia D’Alessandro and Madison Naman each was selected to deliver a speech.
D’Alessandro spoke of overcoming the adversity associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, noting how it boosted the graduates’ resiliency and strengthened their character.
“To say getting here was a rollercoaster would be quite the understatement as we have all dealt with so much in our personal lives, friends groups and as a community, yet we have all made it here,” she said.
D’Alessandro told her fellow graduates that the future is upon them.
“Right now some of you are witnessing while others are experiencing their final moments as Mainland students. Within minutes, a simple walk and the handing off of a piece of paper, we will be able to move on to whatever our futures hold for us,” she said. “Whether that be furthering our education at the collegiate level, entering the work force, the military or whatever that means to you, we are all about to embark on our next chapters of our stories.”
D’Alessandro said an assignment in her philosophy class tasked students with writing a graduation speech.
“The go-to thought was the literal beginning of our freshman year,” she said. “We walked in with a range of emotions racing through our bodies as we entered the next of four years of our lives. The best years of our lives were upon us and we had no idea how different they would be from what we had imagined. To say the very least, this was no high school musical.”
She, too, noted how the pandemic, which struck six months into their freshman year, had affected their experience and altered their lives.
“From being in person with our friends and teachers every day to only seeing them through a screen, our lives were forever changed,” she said. “Throughout all of the TEAMS calls and scanning of worksheets, we found a way to make the most of our time at home
— reading books and bingeing shows, game nights on Zoom and, of course, the casually remarkable achievements that we all made. When it was time to come back into the building, we cherished that time together more than ever before.”
D’Alessandro said the students have learned to expect the unexpected.
“If I have learned anything from my high school experience, it is that if anything seems impossible to happen in our lives, there’s a chance that it could totally happen. Needing to take an AP exam from your bedroom could totally happen. Meeting and getting to know and love your best friend solely over Facetime could totally happen,” she said. “We have been told our whole lives that you can never prepare for everything, but I doubt any of us ever expected that to be this true. And yet we have been able to adapt in such a remarkable way, not to mention how we continue to persevere through the many adjustments we had to make to everyday lives.”
Quoting country singing legend Dolly Parton, D’Alessandro said “storms make trees take deeper roots.”
“I believe that people are who they are because of the experiences they endure. It goes without saying that what we have experienced in our four years at Mainland has definitely made us the people that we are today,” she said. “Whether it be the lessons we learned from our teachers or the ones that we learned on our own, they made us the young adults who sit on the field in front of you right now.”
Naman, who joined the school as a junior from out of state, said as she was pondering how to write her speech, a letter arrived in the mail — from herself.
She said an assignment in her seventh-grade English class charged her with writing a letter to her senior self.
Naman said the letter included the price of gas way back in 2018, listed her recent athletic and academic achievements and noted her crush on two celebrities — “that may or may not still hold true.”
She said one line in the letter stood out more than the others — “I hope that not much has changed.”
“As I read that one line, all I could think about is how much has changed since then. If I told my seventh-grade self what was about to hit her, I don’t know how she would have handled it,” Naman said.
“Most of us entered high school wide-eyed with personal goals, hopes, dreams and expectations of what what our high school experience would be. I can guarantee that 99 percent of us, myself included, encountered challenges and changes these past four years that have caused our high school experience to deviate from the ideal we had in mind when we first walked through Mainland’s doors,” she said. “I think it’s fair to say that we’ve all evolved in some regard during these past few years in the way we think, our beliefs and values and the knowledge we hold.
“We have overcome COVID, virtual learning, the near banning of Tik Tok and the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster great war of 2022. “Despite all of these bumps in the road and/or positive additions to our lives, we have all come out the other side better versions of ourselves.”
She said one thing that is crystal clear is that “one constant thing in life is change.”
“I know that change can be uncomfortable and it is very easy to try to resist it to stay in a more familiar environment, but ultimately it is how we grow and learn,” Naman said. “The new chapter we are about to embark on gives us the opportunity to try new things and explore other areas of ourselves we have not yet tapped into.”
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
