Graduates urged ‘to explore their interests’

HAMDEN >> The graduates of Sacred Heart Academy Class of 2017 know they’re still learning, but they trust that they’ll figure things out.

At the girls’ Catholic school’s commencement Saturday on Sacred Heart Academy’s campus, the top three students in the class disposed of conventional graduation ceremony wisdom — wherein teenagers attempt to predict their own futures — opting instead to acknowledge how unsure the future could be.

Valedictorian Elizabeth Lamont shared her love of Peter Pan, calling it a story of faith, imagination, love and growing up.

“I feel like an adult and like a 5-year-old at the same time,” she said.

Sacred Heart Academy, she said, prepared its graduates with the skills to find creative solutions to life’s problems.

Salutatorian Alysse Mastriano said she is known among her classmates for being self-critical, but graduating from high school is a point of pride.

Mastriano said she found herself in a habit of motivating herself through hard times by pushing herself through one week at a time, until she happened upon a realization: she was wishing her life away. By willing herself into the future, she was missing what was in front of her.

In providing a prayer for the graduates, student Catherine Valloso spoke of how she got lost looking for her homeroom in the art room on the very first day. Art, she said, always brought her comfort in trying times.

“I hope you will be able to accept new forms of comfort,” she said to the more than 100 graduates.

Art, she said, is a passion of hers requiring patience in order to see progress. The picture God is painting of their futures may not be clear, she said, but there is an image planned for each of the graduates.

Commencement speaker Mary Gniadek, the school’s valedictorian in 2004, also did away with graduation advice, sharing that she would prefer the graduates not follow their dreams, but rather to explore their interests, and not to forge their Online:

For a slideshow, visit

own path, but to seek advice from experts.

Gniadek said she couldn’t define success for the graduates, but she had an idea of what it is not.

“Success probably isn’t being rich and it probably isn’t being Instagram famous,” she said.

According to the school, 100 percent of the graduates will attend college in the fall.

ARNOLD GOLD — NEW HAVEN REGISTER Sacred Heart Academy graduates Katie Mackey (center) assists Anna Claire with her tassel while processing into commencement exercises outside of the Philip Paolella, Jr. Recreational Center at the school in Hamden on Saturday.

ARNOLD GOLD — NEW HAVEN REGISTER Sacred Heart Academy graduates line up for commencement exercises outside of the Philip Paolella, Jr. Recreational Center at the school in Hamden on Saturday.