Each year, graduation speakers are GUS alumni who have recently graduated from college - who were graduating eighth grade themselves when the current graduating class was finishing up kindergarten. The 2021 Graduation speakers were Jack Norton ’13 and Sarah McGrath ’13. Each shared words of wisdom and advice with the graduates and reminisced about their shared fondness for the 8th grade humanities map project.

Alumni speakers are a treasured and impactful annual tradition at GUS graduation. Alumni speakers are always selected from the class that was graduating themselves as eighth graders when the current 8th grade class was in Kindergarten. They return as recent college graduates to speak to share words of wisdom and advice with the graduating class. The 2022 Graduation Speakers were Charlotte Collins ’14, who recently graduated summa cum laude from Northeastern University with a B.A. in Environmental Studies and a minor in Art, and James Packard ’14, who is scheduled to graduate this December with a B.S. in Computer Engineering and Computer Science, also from Northeastern University. Both speakers encouraged graduates to explore and follow their interests. 

Charlotte Collins ’14

Hi everyone! 

I’d like to thank Mrs. Forsyth and everyone else in the GUS community for welcoming me here to speak to you all today. It’s crazy to think that it has already been eight years since I was sitting in those chairs graduating from GUS myself. I remember back then that I thought the alumni speakers were the coolest grown-ups in the world, which now being here feels very silly, because I don’t feel very grown-up myself.  Since then I’ve secretly wanted to get asked back as a speaker myself, so thank you for making that little dream of mine come true. 

 I’m interested to see if any of you have been here since Kindergarten? (wait and comment). When I graduated GUS myself, it was the end of my ninth year here and I felt like my life as I knew it was ending. Since then, I’ve graduated from both high school at the Governor’s Academy and, recently, from my undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies at Northeastern University. So naturally, this month I’ve heard quite a few commencement speeches myself. Knowing that I was asked to give this speech, I took some mental notes. The main thing I learned is that commencement speakers like to tell stories, give advice, and do things in threes, for some reason. So I’m going to tell a few stories and give some advice, but not in threes, because I’m not like other commencement speakers. I also learned that Mr. Bartsch and Mrs. Clarke are retiring - for which I want to say a big congratulations to both of you, your break is well deserved - so these stories are going to be dedicated to them.

My first story is about the year of Ultimate Frisbee, otherwise known as my class’s eighth grade year. I’m not sure if you all know, but Mr. Bartsch is very good at frisbee, I think he played in college, if I’m correct? For some reason or another, likely having to do with Mr. Bartsch and the abundance of frisbees he keeps in his classroom, our class became entirely obsessed with playing frisbee. I remember we’d spend our entire break time most days outside tossing the frisbee around. Now this might not be very noteworthy to most people, especially those of you who were born naturally athletic, but for me the fact that I was outside engaging in any sport, especially one that involves throwing and catching, is truly miraculous. And I specifically remember that the reason I started going out there is because Mr. Bartsch spent a few recesses with my friends and I showing us a few techniques for throwing the frisbee, practicing with us, and giving us pointers. Most importantly, he didn’t make me feel embarrassed for the pathetic state of my frisbee throwing skills when I started out, but helped encourage me to slowly get better and to show up and practice every day. Playing frisbee in eighth grade was the first time I think I ever willingly chose to play a team sport in my free time, and I really enjoyed it. Mr. Bartsch helped to create a judgment-free space for sports, which I can admit is extremely hard to do with a group of teenagers. I have a good memory of playing a round of ultimate frisbee outside in the pouring rain during both recess and help, my group of ‘unathletic’ friends versus the ‘athletic’ boys we didn’t hang out with often, having the time of my life and not losing by that much, although I think that might have been of favor on part of the other team. Frisbee is still one of the only sports that I will actively join. Seriously, thank you for that, Mr. Bartsch. 

My second story has to do with Mrs. Clarke’s neighbor. I don’t even think that Mrs. Clarke knows this story, actually. In seventh grade, one of my friends won a pizza party in the auction hosted very generously by Mrs. Clarke at her house. Perhaps too generously, because little did she know the havoc we would be wreaking.  So a group of five or six girls went to bake pizza at Mrs. Clarke’s house, which I remember being extremely fun, funny, and delicious. The real story, though, happened when the pizza was baking in the oven, and Mrs. Clarke let us go outside to walk around a bit until the pizza was done. At that point, it was nighttime, and we all knew that the obvious thing to do when it was nighttime and one was outside was to play manhunt. For those of you who don’t know, manhunt is a combination of hide and seek and tag, where one person starts as the seeker and the rest hide, if one of the ‘hiders’ is found and tagged by the ‘seeker’ they too become a seeker, and so on. Mrs. Clarke lived in a nice, green neighborhood and the houses had lots of wooded areas and bushes, which were very well-suited for good hiding places. At one point, I found the perfect hiding bush. It was nicely trimmed and somewhat low to the ground, and if you went back behind, you could crawl under and within the bush and be perfectly hidden as long as you were laying flat on your stomach in the dirt. I was laying there, covered in dirt, when disaster struck. This bush, you see, was directly next to the driveway of one of Mrs. Clarke’s neighbor’s houses. The house had looked fairly empty, lights off, until at that moment the house’s occupant decided to walk out of the door, enjoy the crisp air for a few seconds in the driveway, and then get into and start their car, a mere few feet away from where I was laying face down in the dirt, underneath their bush, in the dark, clearly trespassing. As an inexperienced trespassing bush dweller, I was unsure how to react in this situation. I thought the best thing to do would be to get up and announce myself and apologize because if they saw me lying in the bush staring at them, they would most likely freak out and assume I was staking out a burglary, but the longer I hesitated the further away this option felt, because why would I have waited this long to tell them. Surely the best thing to do would be to remain in the bush, very still, until the person left, then they would never know and no one would be scared or get the police called on them. Luckily for me, the person drove away after a minute or two, and I got up and sprinted away from the house, completely freaked out and realizing just how stupid I had been. Mrs. Clarke, I don’t know who your neighbor was, but I am truly sorry for the emotional damage that I almost caused. 

Great, now that you all know how much of an unathletic idiot I was in middle school, and arguably still continue to be, I can go on and give you all advice. I promise I’m somewhat qualified. I’ve thought up a list of four little pieces of advice that I’ve learned in the last eight years, things that I wish I had known, or taken more seriously, when I was in your place. And yes, the reason this is a list of four may be just to spite that rule of three. I’ll admit nothing.

Number one: stand up for yourself. This is something that I find myself learning over and over and over again. Most recently, it’s in the context of my own health. I’ve been having ‘invisible’ chronic symptoms and have visited many doctors that I’ve found, through reading my own visit notes, have not really listened or taken me seriously. I’ve had to fight to be heard and do my own research on my symptoms to request specific testing, all while feeling unwell a lot of the time. What I’ve learned through this is that when you are made to feel invisible is when it is most important to speak up for yourself. You deserve to be treated with respect, and you alone are responsible for holding others accountable for the way that they treat you. This applies to friendships, relationships, and authority figures, as well.

Number two: you don’t have to be the best. Some of you may have recently gone through the application process for high schools, and more of you will go through the college application process in a few years. While college itself is a time to find yourself and follow your interests, the college process is a pressure cooker that tries to quantify you by the numbers on your test scores. Do your best in school but try to remember that you are not just your grades, or your test scores: you are your passion for learning, for sports, for your hobbies. Try not to stress about getting into your dream school or upholding the expectations of your teachers or family. Your “right” path is whatever path you end up taking. Don’t be afraid to seek out opportunities for yourself that feel right to you.

Number three: don’t be afraid to be a nerd. I’m not going to lie, high school is a time of high social pressure. You will probably feel an expectation to ‘fit in’ and fitting in, a lot of the time, can mean pushing your learning to the side. Try your best not to do this. And by this I don’t mean forgo your friendships for your schoolwork. I mean try not to lose your interest in learning new things. Keep up your hobbies. If you love reading, try to save time in your day to free read, even if it’s only for 10 minutes. Learn a new instrument or craft. Or immerse yourself in your studies, if that’s what you like to do. I’ve found that the most interesting people are those that have interests and are proud of their nerdiness. I also found that one of the things that GUS does best is to instill a passion for learning. I swear that everyone I went to school with here is undeniably cool because they do the things they love to do.

Number four: do what makes you happy. Now this one, more than the others, is definitely easier said than done. The way mental health education was handled in my high school was comical. We had a mindfulness class, which is great and important in theory, but in execution would start off with our teacher lecturing us for 20 minutes on the importance of our good grades and how if we didn’t do well in this specific semester and year of school then we would basically ruin all chances of going to college and getting a job so therefore it was really important to control our stress because we had so many good reasons to stress about. She would then have us lay on the floor and listen to a recorded meditation video to “relax,” but really all anyone would be thinking about were all the new worries she gave us to stress about. If your school is anything like this, then you’ll realize you need to take your mental health into your own hands. If you feel yourself getting overwhelmed, I’d recommend getting someone to talk to. I believe that everyone can benefit from having a therapist and most schools have counselors you can reach out to. I’d also like to point out that mental illness is unfortunately becoming more common in young people. Growing up in our world right now is especially hard and your parents might actually not be able to get it. So, listen to your body and your mind, seek help if you need it, and remember that you are not alone. I personally have depression and anxiety which I receive treatment for, and I can say that I’m happy. So, you’ve got this.

I remember sitting through my own graduation here with tears running down my face because I truly thought it was the end of everything I knew, and I was scared for the future. News flash: it was not, actually, the end of everything. The friends I made here are still some of my closest friends, we only got closer in high school. The friendships you make here don’t have to go away, just because you leave. Neither does the community. I’ve been back here to visit kind of a lot. I’ve stayed in touch. So, take your next steps forward into your future knowing that the people you met here still have your back. No matter where you go, you’ll always have this place to come back to. So remember, stand up for yourself, don’t try to be the best, be your nerdy and amazing self, and do what makes you happy. You’ve got this.

James Packard ’14

Congratulations, graduates. You’ve done a lot to get here. If things haven’t changed too much since I was here eight years ago, then you’ve just given a speech in front of your peers, teachers, and parents. I know how much of a challenge that is; I haven’t given any speeches like that through high school or college. So, actually, school only gets easier after eighth grade.

Ok. Not really. But, if anything, I know that Glen Urquhart has prepared you for what’s next.

I’ve been invited back to offer some wisdom, but instead I’ve decided to share my most successful high school projects:

Have you ever wanted to know which direction someone is looking? Well, my friends and I made an app that uses machine learning to give you an answer–left or right. And it’s almost as accurate as a random guess.

If you’ve ever needed to transfer a file in the most inconvenient way possible, a friend and I made a website where you can upload not one but two files. That’s the whole website.

I also built a quadcopter with my friend. It can fly… it just happens to be more stable on the ground.

Ok, so these projects might not be successful by usual standards, but I hope to convince you that they are successful, just in a different way.

In high school, you’ll be introduced to a lot of new topics and it’s hard to know what is going to be useful for you. But trying to focus too much on things that are useful can get in the way of exploring what interests you.

By exploring, I mean to try doing something without having any expectation of getting something useful out of it. Not that you won’t, but that your main objective is to learn, and it’s a happy coincidence if the result is useful. Without the pressure of expectations or deadlines, you’ll discover more and enjoy the process. And if you find other people willing to join you in your useless endeavor, you’ll each add unique ideas that will expand what you learn. When you finish a project and realize how much more you know now than when you started, that’s success.

While the eye tracking software my friends and I made was on par with flipping a coin, we were able to discover how machine learning worked (or didn’t work, in our case) because we tried to do it from scratch. If we were more concerned with the end result, we would have just used tools that we already knew worked, and we wouldn’t have learned nearly as much.

And although the drone flew more like a rock, we learned more from each failed attempt than if it had just worked on the first try. It also helps to have a friend that’s willing to keep trying even after you wire things backwards and fry the circuit board. 

And that website my friend and I made was a parody of a site called mono-upload where you could only upload one file. So we thought it’d be funny if we made one called duo-upload where you could upload two files. That was one of the first websites I ever made, and it helped me figure out how websites worked. Arguably the most useless project… yet it kicked off what I needed to learn to build web applications for 3d printers, which I do now for my job!

So go out and make something useless with your friends… It's more fun than doing something useful, and in the process you’ll learn more about the things that interest you.

Thank you.