2015 Graduation Student Speeches

Each year at graduation, the students who have received the honor of being valedictorian or salutatorian deliver speeches about what they have learned in high school and what they hope to remember throughout their time at college or career. This year, the valedictorian was Will Glas, and two students tied for salutatorian, Evie Fordham and Kayla Lavan. Will will attend North Carolina State University in the fall, Evie, Patrick Henry College, and Kayla, North Carolina Wesleyan College. Here are the speeches in the order that they gave them on graduation night.

 

 

Evie Fordham

IMG_20150528_192755908 (1)Hi everybody, it’s an honor to speak here today. Today I’m going to talk about each of three areas of life that we graduates are going to be thinking about a lot in this coming year that will be full of transitions. They are friends, career, and our relationship with God.

First, friends. Here’s a quote from musician Jim Morrison that I think defines how you should feel around a friend.

He said, “A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself – and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he really is.”

This sentiment echoes Proverbs 17:17, which says, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”

This doesn’t mean we should look for friends who passively accept or agree with whatever we do. Instead, good friends are the ones who love you enough to confront you about your mistakes or to comfort you when you’re an upset mess. We graduates are going to make many new friends next year, and, let’s be honest, we’re all going to be a little bit confused about how to present ourselves or act around the people we’ve just met but know we’re going to spend the next four years of our lives with. I’m here to encourage you to be yourself, not in a hokey way, but to stand for your principles and not make compromises that bother you just for that one person or group of people to accept you. I want to encourage all of you to look for friends who loves Jesus even more than they love you, because they’ll be the best friends of all.

Next is careers. Society tells us that success is largely measured by our paychecks and promotions, but I think the most important thing you can know about your career is that it’s in God’s hands and that as long as you’re honoring God through your job, you’re successful.

Jobs and preparing for the future can be a source of a lot of worry, so the verses I chose to go along with this category are Matthew 6:25-27, in which Jesus says, “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?”

As we’re starting careers or studying for them, we’ll be tempted to stress a lot over grades, job interviews, and mean professors, but we have to temper our penchant to freak out with both hard work of our own and the knowledge that God’s plan is always followed. It’s only then that we’ll be able to reach our full potential.

In regards to finding a fulfilling job, Steve Jobs said, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

In the spirit of this quote, I hope that the entire Class of 2015 is able to find work in which they honor God and challenge themselves in the coming years.

Lastly, an individual’s relationship with God is the foremost area of his or her life. Everything else comes second. We grads are going to have to figure out how to own our relationships with our Savior as we become less and less reliant on our families and Wake Christian for being a big part of how we live out our faith. This section doesn’t need a quote because God has already given us an entire book that I’m pretty sure each of us has a copy of that we can use to better get to know Him. In Matthew 22, Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

A lot of times we’re told to love God but not told how. I’m still figuring this out myself. To me, there are a couple of tangible things we can do that say, “I love You, Lord.”

First of all, reading your Bible everyday is not an impossible, Pharisaical thing. As a Christian, not bothering to read the Word and thinking you’ll still know about God and His will is like expecting to know someone completely whom you’ve never even heard of before. Hearing a few verses a week in chapel is not enough to grow a faith. God wants you to take a look at the book he wrote for you, not by reading an entire book of the Bible a day, but by figuring out a manageable amount that you can read everyday and better get to know your Lord.

The other way to live out love for God is just to love people. We have to do the hard thing and say those kind words or stick up for someone or tell the truth even when our flesh says no. We have to adopt the mindset of Jesus, who disregarded the opinion of man and focused on the opinion of God.

This kind of thinking reminds us that we blow things out of proportion and fear others’ opinions way too much. I think when we get to Heaven, we’ll be surprised by the good deeds God turns out to value the most. It won’t be the billionaire giving away millions to charity. It will be me and you, not being swayed by whatever ungodly influences we encounter this summer, at our jobs, or in college. It will be any Christian who has courage, who spurns laziness and flippancy and fear to do things God’s way. That’s the kind of people I pray the Class of 2015 will be. Thank you.

 

Kayla Lavan

Salutatorian picAs long as I can remember, which is only about three years, I have wanted to be either valedictorian or salutatorian of my high school class.  And now that I’m standing in front of over thirteen hundred people, I can’t quite remember what that reason was.  In fact, I couldn’t even spell the word salutatorian until this past week.  But I will do my best to impart my young knowledge to you all in around three to five minutes.

First off, I would like to point out the fact that on the day when we took our senior cap and gown pictures, our valedictorian, Will Glas, had his cap on backwards even though there is literally an arrow on the inside that points to the front.  I also think you should know that this past sunday at the senior picnic he managed to drive his truck into a ditch.  That just goes to show that being smart and having common sense do not necessarily go hand in hand.  I’m still slightly amazed that he’s valedictorian, but Will you know we all love you.  But on a more serious note…

People often say that your high school years are the best of your life.  I’m really hoping that this is just a myth.  For many of us, the class of 2015, our high school years have not lived up to the high expectations that we had.  Though there were many high moments filled with happiness and laughter, there were also incredibly low ones filled with grief and tears.  During the last four years, I know many of you have had to experience breakups, major injuries and medical issues, the divorce of parents, and obviously the unimaginable tragedy of the death of a dear classmate and friend.  If high school really is the best time of our lives, we might as well just give up now.  But, I think there’s hope.

People say college will be so much more difficult than anything we’ve experienced and I think they are wrong.  Throughout this year we have faced trials unlike any other.  School has pushed us academically, athletics have pushed us physically, and the trials we faced pushed us spiritually.  Throughout our lives we have been prepped and pruned to be self-sufficient adults by our parents, teachers, coaches, pastors, and others in authority over us.  And if you really think about it, this is the moment where their preparations for us end, and we have to take over.  When you look at it, we’ve already lived through the awkward middle school years and the stressful high school years  So, I believe that our futures can only go uphill.  I don’t want it to sound like a cliche when I say that the future is bright, but our futures really are very bright.  This will be the time when we get to make our own decisions and our own mistakes.  In Isaiah 42:9, God says “See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare.”  God knows what we have been through and He also knows that he has a perfect plan for us.  If you have spent any time at all at Wake Christian, I’m sure you know the verse Jeremiah 29:11 which states “For I know the plans I have for you’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

I don’t mean to say that college will be a breeze and that the rest of our lives will go by without a problem and that we will never have struggles, because of course we will.  But now we are ready to face these struggles head on.  It was the job of our parents to launch us into the world.  They did their best to protect us while allowing us to grow and mature.  Because of this, we have a solid foundation that will allow us to prosper in the world.  As I said before, the future is bright.  We will have the opportunity to continue to grow and learn, but it is important that you do not forget where you have come from.  Remember the people who inspired you, motivated you, and uplifted you.  Remember the people you love and the people who love you.  Remember all the things you have lost and all that you have gained.  And most importantly, keep your eyes fixed on God.  Thank you.

 

Will Glas

willglasvaledictorian.jpgGood afternoon graduates, parents, friends, esteemed faculty and staff (and of course, Mr. Kovarik), and most importantly of all, my mother Cathy. Hi mom, how’s it going? How are you?

Now, I would like to say is that it’s a huge honor to be up here representing the class of 2015. However, I will readily acknowledge that I am probably not the most qualified person in our class to be up here giving this speech. I’m not the most handsome, Isaiah Moore just barely edges me out for that one. I’m not the funniest. I’m certainly not the smartest. I crashed my car in a ditch trying to park at the class picnic less than a week ago, as Kayla so graciously pointed out. But, in any case, it is me up here, so I would like to thank Wake Christian for giving me the opportunity to speak, I am sure they will probably regret it.

When we first entered the hallowed halls of the Wake Christian Academy high school four long years ago, we had no idea what we were in for. We didn’t know that one of our teachers was secretly Frozone (Mr. Duckingfield). We didn’t know that Mr. Helder’s booming voice could be mistaken for the Lord Almighty condemning us for our sins of being lazy on the soccer field. We had no idea that there was a fire alarm in the chemistry room that went directly to the fire department, and we didn’t know that it would be set off, calling the fire department and causing the school to be evacuated, at least once in our high school careers. We didn’t know that there was absolutely, under no circumstances, EVER to be food or drink in the media center, although maybe we should have, because there are signs in the media center, that say no food or drink. Hunter Wilson will show you.

Now, on a more serious note, I would like to take a moment to say thanks to a very important group of people. I think I can speak for the entire class of 2015 when I say thank you to the incredible faculty of our school. What I have loved about Wake Christian Academy, perhaps more than anything, is the opportunity to form bonds with the hard-working teachers and administrators that you see behind me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you for the long hours of work, the confusing lessons, the prayers, the support, and perhaps toughest of all, attempting to put up with me and my classmates on a daily basis. Though my classmates and I may have been frustrating at times throughout the years, it is truly a blessing to be taught by someone who loves the Lord and cares about what they do. Please join me in a round of applause.

Now I’d like to take a moment to make a few predictions about where various members of the WCA Class of 2015 will be in five years’ time.

Hailey Brooke McFadden will probably be competing in the 2020 Summer Olympics as an all-star volleyball player. Or maybe she’ll be a lawyer or something, but that’s a lot less exciting, so I’d say go for the Olympics, Hailey.

Jonathan “Spud” Reichert will probably be a member of a professional sports team… not as a player, but as mascot, because his mascot skills are second to none.

Kayla Lavan will probably be slaving away in veterinarian school, eating ramen every night and looking on in dismay at her accumulating debt.

Victoria Renfroe will probably be living out of a gym, subsisting on protein shakes and nutrition bars.

And last but not least, Chad Birkenstock will undoubtedly be making his living selling drugs… legally. Because he’s gonna be a pharmacist.

As you may have noticed, I didn’t set out in this speech to give a piece of grandiose moral advice that would change your life. The way I see it, an eighteen-year-old whose mother still does his laundry really has no business trying to teach someone else how to live their life effectively. I would, however, like to conclude by saying this to my fellow graduates:

Regardless of your experiences here at Wake Christian over the time we have spent together as a class, we have shaped each other, for better or for worse, into the capable young adults that we are today. As you reflect back upon our years together, remember all the good times that we enjoyed together as a class. We have now all officially completed high school. It was no easy feat, but the most important thing is, we did it together.

Congratulations, WCA Class of 2015!

 

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