[ccfic caption-text format="plaintext"]
By Amelia Tarallo
Hometown Weekly Staff
Each year, a new graduating class meets together, donning dark blue robes, at Dover Sherborn High School, eager to receive their hard-earned diplomas. Their friends and families gather on the field, sitting patiently until their loved ones are handed their diplomas. It’s the last time these students, who spent the last seven years of their lives together, will gather.
This year’s 150 graduating Dover Sherborn seniors met together for the last time on June 6. Though bittersweet, it’s clear these students are ready for new adventures.
Daniel Bennett, Dover Sherborn class of 2019 president, began by noting how if his speech was successful, people may say that he peaked in high school. “Of course, no one can be sure I peaked in high school unless I move back into my childhood home in Sherborn, name my son Dan Bennett after myself, and send him to DS,” Bennett joked, using the moment as a tribute to his own dad. “Well, hopefully by the time I return to DS for Dan Junior’s graduation, the library construction will be finished.” Bennett went on to provide the audience with a quick summary of the historical and recent disagreements between Dover and Sherborn. However, their decision to come together 57 years ago to establish a regional high school has been one of the best decisions for both communities and allowed this graduating class to be brought together. “And today, people of both Dover and Sherborn come together to this beautiful ceremony in celebration of that agreement 57 years ago.”
The class of 2019 gathered for the last time at graduation.
Caroline Buehler, the first of two declamation winners, began her speech discussing how she’d tried to predict how she would be by the time she graduated high school. But none of it was like she had thought it would be. “Our future holds an infinite amount of possibilities. We don’t know what the future holds, so we know we won’t get bored,” she told her audience. “I believe there is power in not knowing, because we get to keep learning about ourselves, the people around us, and the world.” Many people in the audience were moved by her speech, some even shedding a few tears. Buehler continued to address her fellow classmates about their current situation. “In this moment in our lives, we are making the leap of faith, head-first, into the future, not because we know what’s to come, but because of the amazing possibilities and people life holds for us - and that’s going to be pretty interesting, but pretty amazing, as well.”
Kavya Rajagopalan went an unorthodox route when it came to her speech. She began by describing a chicken McNugget. Despite being a life-long vegetarian, Rajagopalan was confident in her declaration: “Those are some good looking chicken nuggets.” The audience laughed, many nodding their heads in agreement. Rajagopalan then turned her speech in an unexpected direction and explained how chicken McNuggets are a metaphor for having confidence. “The point I am trying to make is people like chicken McNuggets, and chicken McNuggets look great, and essentially those chicken McNuggets are what I like to call confidence,” she told the audience. It is because of this confidence that people like them so much, a lesson that can be applied when a person exudes enough confidence to convince people to want to be around them. She then explained how her own confidence had grown throughout her final two years of high school. She ended her speech encouraging her fellow classmates and audience to find their own confidence, just like those golden brown McNuggets. “Why fear what other people think or have to say about you when the only person in the room you should be attempting to please is yourself?”
Following the ceremony, students gathered with their friends and families to share their excitement.
Their families and friends may know the next step for these students, like where they’re going to college, or where they’re working, or what they’ll do during their gap year. But no one knows the exact journeys these students are destined to take. Whether they return to Dover Sherborn someday or move across the world, whether they decide to take that leap of faith or play it safe, whether they too can manage the unusual method of exuding the confidence of a chicken nugget, one thing is definite: these students are ready for their next adventure, and it’s surely going to be a great one.
