Thursday, July 3, 2014

Andrew Miner's Ivy Day & Graduation Speeches

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Ivy_vine.jpg
IVY DAY SPEECH

“Strong and Hearty Roots”
By Andrew Miner
  
Honored guest, members of the East Greenwich High School community, family, and friends.

I stand before you today to deliver a message on behalf of the class of 2014. But first let me say a few words about my classmates seated behind me.
 
They are incredibly talented, fiercely loyal, tenacious, authentic, passionate, purposeful, funny, and completely crazy, and I mean that in the best possible sense of the word. They are simply the best, and the class of 2014 is the future. America and the world have nothing to worry about!

I say to the members of this class, thank you for the distinct honor of being your president. It has meant more to me than you know.

Thank you to our class advisors, Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. Healy. They believed in us, never gave up on us despite our best efforts, and are ushering us into our to our greatest hour as Avengers. We hope you are proud of us today. We were proud to have you as our class advisors. Thank you for getting us here!

We, the class of 2014, approach our graduation with gratitude to our families, the administrators of our school, and our teachers for their service to our lives. We have learned that through hard work and committed effort many great things can be achieved, but often the most valuable things in life come our way by grace-- a loving family, a committed teacher, a caring coach--unearned gifts bestowed on us that can truly change one’s life. And today seemed like the perfect day for us to recognize those gifts.

Ours is a generation that has known violence, terror, and war. Together those gathered here have made sure that we have known beauty, love, and joy as well.

You have armed us with the courage to rise when we fall and given us a belief in ourselves and the goodness of others. You have taught us to approach our fellow man with an open hand and not a closed fist, but to be ever ready to fight when necessary for what is right and just. You have shown us how to be understanding in the face of human mistakes and that our strength lies in our diversity.

Soon you all will send us on our way with your lessons in our hearts and on our minds.  We will never forget what you have done for us.

To our families, though we have not often shown it, we have seen how you have risen with the early morning sun, gathered with the autumn leaves, put your back into shoveling the heavy winter snow, and planted with hope each springtime. You have done the extraordinary work of building a home and raising a family under the cloak of the commonplace and the ordinary routine. You have carried us.  And when we have had to walk alone, you have been a lamp to our feet. You have taught us how to ride a bike, drive a car, mow the grass, butter that perfect ear of summer sweetcorn, and how to recover from a broken heart. You have searched for lost puppy dogs, put together superhero costumes at 11 o’clock at night, dusted off your high school Spanish, and thrown thousands of pitches to us in the backyard. You have attended concerts, ball games, tennis matches, and Science Olympiads. You have hot glued dioramas, nursed us through the first week of braces, and the extraction of our wisdom teeth. You have been present when we needed you most, and content to watch from afar as we grew independent. We have seen your sacrifice, trust me we have, and one day, in your image, we will do the same, if the fates allow. For you have shown us there is no greater title than parent. We love you deeply. We know we are here today because of you


To Mr. Prodraza, Mr. Chase, and Mr. Cobain, you were the final frontier for this class.  We all knew where the buck stopped, some of us more personally than other. Thank you for assuming that responsibility and for discharging it with fairness and compassion, for supporting our teachers, and creating a culture of caring and excellence in our school.     

To Mr. Podraza and Mr. Chace, thank you for teaching us that we matter and that it is still possible for those who are passionately committed to a noble cause to change the world. To Mr. Cobain, because of you, Avengers never have to concede anything when we step onto an athletic field or any court or arena of competition, no matter who our competitors are. Thank you for your service to our lives. It will be long remembered.

To our teachers, you have made certain that the lessons gained in these halls have been filled with knowledge and healthy debate. You have preached and practiced respect, acceptance, and peace, showing us what the world can look like, indeed what it should look like. You have made our cares your concerns and our education your calling. What a fine, fine education it is you gave to us. From a young Holden Caulfield to the Old Man in the Sea, you have encouraged us to Go Tell on the Mountain, from x equals four to graphing the secant squared of 3pi over 2x minus one fourth pi to the negative one half, from the American Revolution to the French Revolution to the cultural revolution to electoral recounts to the election of America’s first African American president, from hola and merci and latin conjugations to Spanish poetry to French literature, from the structure of DNA to disulfide bonds to Einstein’s theories, from handball to dodgeball to glazing pottery to playing Thad Jones’ Big Dipper. You have encouraged us half a league, half a league, half a league onward, coaching us to joyous victories and nursing us through painful defeats in all aspects of high school life. You have charmed, cajoled, demanded, and insisted on the best we had to offer, and then you asked for just a little bit more, urging us to know our minds and our hearts better. You never faltered, grew weary, lost hope, or abandoned your purpose because this task, yes this task, was too important to you. And we, well, we didn’t make it easy.

Today we move on but you, our teachers, in a few short months, you return to do this all over again for another group of students and another graduating class. While this may seem like a monotonous exercise in futility, it is a testament to your enduring faith in the future and your willingness to put yourself on the line to preserve and influence that future. Our superheroes do not wear caps or masks, although they have been known to wear eye patches and ugly Christmas sweaters. Our heroes are our teachers. Thank you. We know we are here today because of you.

Thank you as well to those who keep our school safe and clean, who cook the food, staff the office, the guidance department, and the nurse’s office. Those who have contributed so much to our time here and who have been content to have their hard work stay in the shadows. Today, there are no shadows. Thank you for what you have done for us.

Now, we, the class of 2014, pledge to you that we will be a branch of this vine that will bear much good fruit. With your guidance we go forth from this place seeking not the depreciating fortune of the good life but seeking instead the unwavering value of a human life dedicated to hard work, love, gratitude, and service to one another.  For the tasks ahead, you are our faithful and fixed example. You are our hearty and strong roots.  For these gifts, we will always be grateful.

From the bottom of our very full hearts, from the class of 2014, thank you.
  
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Salutatorian Speech

“Dare to Love”
By: Andrew Miner

Honored guest, members of the East Greenwich High School community, family, and friends.

By now some of you may have seen the viral sensation, the Norwegian video entitled “Hva Gjor du om du ser et barn som fryser?”

While I’m sure we have plenty of native Norwegian speakers with us today, one doesn’t even need to know Norwegian to understand this video.

It is a mere 2 minutes long.

It starts with a young boy without a coat, hat, scarf or gloves waiting at a bus stop on a snowy cold Norwegian winter day. The young boy has steam coming out of nostrils, mouth, and off the top of his head, as he shivers and rub his bare hands over his arms covered only in a long sleeve t-shirt.

His ears are red, his lips are blue, his nose is running, and he’s shivering!

Slowly others come to wait for the bus and they are shocked that the boy has no coat, no protection against the elements. At first they seem to hesitate to interfere but the boy is absolutely frozen. Gathered at the bus stop are a grandmother, a young Norwegian woman, an older man and his wife, a skier in a slouchy hat, a teenager, people from all walks of life.

First, we see the grandma take off her scarf which she turn into a shawl and places around the boys shoulders. The skier gives the boy his gloves, another person gives a hat, coats pile on, and in the end a young man sits next to the boy talking and laughing, himself in short sleeves as his warm winter parka lays wrapped around the once shivering boy’s shoulders.

One commenter said it best when he said, “Life is short. Never miss an opportunity to perfect your own humanity. Love is simple. In fact it is that we truly have. It binds us. It makes us who we are.”

That commentator goes on to surmise that it is not the coat that keeps us warm, it is the love that keeps us warm.

His clarion call is simple but deeply profound.

“Be more human.”

As sophomores in this high school we study Humanities. We ask big questions about the essence of the human existence. We try to give meaning to our experiences and to learn from the experiences of past generations and civilization. We find clues to our humanness in history, literature, art, culture, styles of government, and all aspects of discourse, but do we practice what we’ve learned? To attempt to learn what it means to be human and improve on that skill every day?

We know that human beings have a great capacity to love, but does that look like?

Well, if you think the ability to love as no teeth, that it doesn’t split the atom or build skyscrapers. You are wrong.

It is the language of romance, flowers, and of Valentine’s Day. It deals in hopes and dreams, and, yes, it believes in a kinder, gentler, more just world, but it is not all peace signs and hearts. It is not passive. Love is an active verb.

It fights apartheid and fascism. It founds Specials Olympics. In February of 2014, it won Olympic Gold in a country that still attempts to deny its very existence. It binds families and communities together through illness and the death of loved ones. It helps neighbors tape up windows as protection against impending hurricanes, and it creates a system of microfinance that gives credit to women entrepreneurs in less developed countries that lifts entire families out of poverty. It carries a person on through cancer so he comes out the other end an even more relentless physical playmaker on the Avenger baseball field and still the best friend a person could even want. And it keeps a coatless, hatless, gloveless boy and those who come to his rescue warm in the frigid Norwegian winter. In fact, it is the only thing can be endlessly divided and still not diminished.  

Jackie, love is how you finally get over losing AirBand when you should have won. No, wait, only psychotherapy can achieve that. It is what makes B, our a 1,000 point basketball star, help bring our unified volleyball team to a state and national championship. It is responsible every time one of us helps out a sick or injured classmate, the way Kim and CC brought me my homework for 3 straight weeks while I was bedridden from a tough break. It’s what motivated Paul to leave Mrs. Dulac’s period 6 math class and wheel me down to World Civ before the bell every day. It’s either love or the fact that Paul hadn’t done his homework. However, it’s not love that filled Rachel’s heart when she said “yes” to a singing clown who asked her to senior prom. That’s what is known as pity, and it’s not what is responsible for our star tennis player, Shiv’s success on the court. That’s called a killer backhand. It is what fills Jaime’s and Maddie’s hearts as they search for my runaway dogs, Linus and Lucy, and returns them to my house nearly every week since the summer of 5th grade.

Love is what warmed Big Hoss’ heart and led him to lift the ban on dancing in the city limits of Beaumont. Love is what inspires Topaz to share her incredible outlines and study guides so knuckleheads like Brett and yours truly me can pass AP Bio. It is what Chris and Heather use to make unbelievable music from black notes on a page. It’s what makes Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. Healy stick by us and believe in us when all rational signs point them in the other direction. I mean all rational signs!

It fights hatred, fear, prejudice, war, and intolerance in all its forms and conquers its biggest adversary, apathy, on a daily basis. Not pride or vanity or greed or power will get you there. Only love.

Yet, at times it has the constancy of cotton candy and fragility of dandelion spores and sometimes, when you least expect it, it makes you feel like you’ve swallowed a jar of butterflies. That’s the paradox and the power of love.

It has been steeped into our education at home and at school. Truly, it
has been the cornerstone of our education, no matter the discipline.
Because of this we know,
“There is no abiding knowledge without character
No continuing commerce without morality
No sustainable wealth without work
There can be no lasting politics without principle
And no true pleasure without conscience.”

In short there can be no REAL life without love. No matter how high we reach or what we can achieve, how great the amount of money we can make, or how much power we can weld. There is no REAL life without LOVE.

To my incredible fellow graduates, the world is before us. Everything we dream of is achievable, and we have big dreams. If our study of Humanities and our own personal experiences has taught us anything, it is that love is the bridge between us and all of those dreams.

The great author Bertrand Russell is quoted as having said, “Three passions governed my life, the search for knowledge, pity for the suffering of mankind, and love. It is the love of knowledge that has urged me to question such things as why the stars shine. It is the love of mankind that has brought pity to my heart when loneliness, poverty, and pain made a mockery of what human life should be. In the end, I suppose it is just love. Love is my passion, love has guided my life and that has made my life worthy.

But there will be moments in life when we feel isolated, alone, hopeless, and far from love. How do we find our way back?

In moments like these, we needn’t stand on a desk or elevate ourselves in any way to see things more clearly and find our way again. The great American writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson would turn his world upside down by looking through your legs, by stooping down to see what he had missed right under his nose. Often the place to find the things that will give our life meaning and bring love to hearts is close by and underfoot if we’d only look. And Emerson teaches us that love is never about elevating ourselves. It is about bringing ourselves back to the present place and location and finding our common ground.

These are things I wish for each of us as we leave here today and for all the days that follow this one. To have those same passions as Mr. Russell: a love of knowledge, a love of mankind, and to be surrounded by and a part of the physical, mental, and spiritual love that gives life its full meaning. Most importantly, to have the ability to find it over and over again by a slight altercation in perspective, just like Mr. Emerson, whenever we lose sight of it. 

Some one exquisitely brilliant once said life is either a daring adventure in love or nothing! It has been said, on numerous occasions, that the class of 2014 is a bunch of daredevils, so go ahead I dare you. Dare to love.

It has been an honor to share today with you, a greater honor still to have shared the past four years with you. I wish for each of us everything our hearts desire as we part ways today having graduated from East Greenwich High School, but mostly I wish for each of us to live a life filled with love.


Thank you.