Matthew Whyte - Valedictorian's Address

Speech given at Commencement Exercises, Friday, Nov. 6th, 2009

Good evening, and welcome; to friends, family, staff, and most importantly: the class of 2009. Before we get started I would like to thank my peers for giving me the opportunity to come up here and represent you during our commencement ceremony. I would like to thank parents and teachers who guided all of us to our graduation. I would also like to thank the team of Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim for their undying dedication, and assistance in my writing this speech. Without them I would not be standing here before you tonight. They by the way are the creators of YouTube. When I began brainstorming ideas for this speech I did what any modern-age teen would do, I headed straight for Google. Google told me that a good speech requires good structure. Knowing that would show I remembered the grammatical structure for essays I naturally strayed from that choice. I then began watching video after video of speeches on the Internet and quickly realized that none of them applied to my speech, they didn’t apply to us. None of them applied to a school as amazing as Cayuga Secondary. So I decided to just sit down and write.

I started to think about what it was that made CSS as great as it is. Was it the friends? Partly. Was it the teachers? Maybe. Or was it the premier level of academics that each of us worked so hard for? Ha-ha, no, that can’t be it. I think it was probably the sense of community that we were all a part of creating. We all know that if we ever needed anything someone would be there to help us. You could walk down the hall and know everyone’s name. If you were extra creepy you might even know their address, phone number, and what they had for supper the night before. But it was this sense of community that made CSS a great place to spend these last four years of our lives. These four years are what we will be looking at tonight.

Grade nine. You show up the first day of school, with the attitude that you’re still the big kid on the block from grade 8. You were the king at your old school. You towered over all of those little kids with your impressive 5’1” stature. But as soon as you enter the doors of high school, that attitude quickly diminishes. As these monsters stare down at you with their huge bodies you quickly find the other pint-sized people like yourself. You group together and move in large herds from class to class, praying that the monsters only pick off the sick and weak from the outside of the herd. You migrate together to get Mexican fries, the number one food product on the face of the planet guaranteed to help you put on weight. If you’re one of the lucky ones to stay in the middle of the herd you will most likely survive to grade ten.

Grade ten is where you’re starting to get settled into high school. Your herds become smaller, and those in your herd are no longer called fellow livestock, but friends. You and your friends start to do things together, and you join clubs, teams, and pretty much anywhere that will be fun, and won’t kill you. Pep rallies start to become something that you really enjoy. You start to understand football, and like watching it. We’re all great fans…and then the busses come. Your body has grown so that the grade 12 monsters need both hands to pick you up by your head and life is looking pretty good.

Grade 11 is a big change. You’re about the same size as the grade 12s and are astonished at how tiny the grade 9s are. You were never that small. You’ve been around the opposite sex enough to know that they make no sense whatsoever. I remember at the Sears drama competition there was like eight guys and we had one room. There were 6 girls though and they had two rooms! Guys DO NOT share beds; we had guys on chairs, cots, and the floor. The girls probably all shared the same bed. Like I said, they make no sense at all.

Finally, grade 12, it feels almost like only 4 months and twelve days ago we were in exams. You were a king again. The foyer benches were finally yours! No one dared mess with you, because even if you were scrawny you knew some very big and strong people who would…diplomatically solve the situation through non-physical action. Anywho, classes were rough, but we managed to pull off good enough marks to make some poorly guided college or university accept us, well most of us, ok some of us.

High school is pretty crazy! You wake up in the morning, way before you’d like to. And sit through classes that are much too long. But somehow every one of us manages to keep our chins up. We make friends, we pass our classes, and eventually we make it to commencement. Whether you liked high school, or hated it with a passion; you cared enough to come here tonight.

If there was one thing that Cayuga Secondary has taught us I would have to say that it is the importance of community. No one can make it through life by them self. We all need a “herd”. So make friends, stay close to your family, and don’t lose touch with those around you. I heard a story about a man named Geoff who worked from his home. He had no family, or friends; he wasn’t part of a community. He was diagnosed with a life threatening disease and he had no one to help him through it. He lived the last year of his life in a hospital bed, and one of his roommates-a young man who had just gone through a simple surgery-asked him if he had any advice now that he had lived his life. Geoff told the young man that his biggest regret was not staying in contact with his old friends, or making any new ones. He said his parents passed away when he was in his thirties and was completely alone. Geoff’s lesson was that we all need to be a part of a community. A community like the one CSS taught us about. I’m not sure what happened to the young man, possibly because I made up the entire story. But we can all listen and learn from Geoff’s imaginary advice. This school is just the first of many communities we will be involved in. But whatever you do don’t forget about the community you’ve been part of here, we won’t forget about you. Thank You.