GRACE MARSHALL
Henry Wise Wood High School
I imagine that many of you out there feel the same sadness I do when I reflect about all our “lasts” we missed out on. How could we possibly know that when we walked out of school on that final Friday, that it would be our last day to walk the halls as seniors.
It is heartbreaking to be placed in a situation where our last opportunities to celebrate all our accomplishments, hardships and triumphs were taken from us. However, I challenge you all to conceptualize our predicament in a slightly different light. I believe that this pandemic has given us the most important lesson of our high school career: Life is full of surprises, but we have to believe that the past three years have instilled in us the tools to navigate any curveball the world throws at us, like a global pandemic or, worse, a rearranged Wise Time schedule.
We are no longer those wide-eyed and clueless Grade 10s with no idea how to find the bathrooms, comprehend why class ends at 3:33, or have to climb those three insufferable flights of stairs to get to mathematics. We are the graduating class of 2020.
As we climbed that staircase as seniors, many of us have never looked down to see when the next step is coming, but we all had faith that it would be there. This is why our graduating quote — “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step,” from Martin Luther King, Jr. — is meaningful to each of us. It emphasizes that you do not have to know where life will take you, you just have to start on the journey ...
Even though at this moment the future is very unclear, and we may be frightened by what comes next, we also know that we have the teachings and support of a magnificent, interwoven community ... No matter what direction we go, our steps will keep rising, and us along with them, taking us on diverging paths and making each of us distinct and exceptional human beings. Graduation is about having the courage to take the first steps, facing an uncertain future with our heads held high, and transitioning to a new beginning.
... We are not unprepared for this daunting beginning. We are ready. We are prepared even if the staircase has no railing. We are prepared even if it skips every second step. We are even prepared if the staircase moves underneath us.