“Our First Chapters”

Hello and good evening. I am Theo Robisch, the valedictorian of the Class of 2023. I am very honored to have the opportunity to be standing here in front of you today. Without the help of our families, friends, and school faculty, none of this would be possible, so thank you all. I would also like to personally thank my mom and dad, Matt and Sara, for pushing me to succeed in school and be the person I am now. Thanks Mom and Dad! Over our lives, in and out of school, our class has grown into one big family. We have made tons of amazing memories and had many great experiences. I’d like to relate our lives to a book, with the first chapter starting back in 2009.

Most of the people on this stage right now walked through the elementary school doors for the first time 14 years ago. We were a bunch of tiny 4 year old strangers that didn’t know how to add or subtract. We all quickly grew to be friends and had tons of fun together. In kindergarten, we did the play “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”.

In second grade we sang Down By The Bay and did the Continental Drift with Mr. Meyer. Three years later, we were all together in Mr. and Mrs. Anderson’s big classroom with the hole in the wall. I specifically remember the end of that year when the graduates came down to the elementary school. I hope that kids look up to us as much as we looked up to them.

Starting from the day we walked into that door for the first time, we learned how to read, spell, and do math, but more importantly, how to be good people. Then we moved onto the next chapter, middle school.

These were weird times to say the least. We started growing physically and mentally. Middle school was filled with braces, acne, and a lot of bad smells. For me, those years were a big blur. It is probably my mind pushing back to try to forget how weird I was. One thing that has stuck with me from middle school, though, was something a substitute teacher said. He was a long-term sub for typing class, and he told us that each year that goes by seems to go faster and faster, so enjoy it while you can. Me being my middle school self, I did not believe him. The four or five years until graduation seemed like such a long time to me. We ended middle school with our trip to Valley Fair and 8th grade graduation. Nervous but excited, we left the middle school doors for the last time and entered the high school chapter of our lives.

We all walked into high school in 2019 as the annoying, weird freshman. Sorry, current freshman. Don’t take it personally. We were all there at one point. The first half of the year was filled with many new experiences; we had semester exams for the first time, and our grades actually mattered. There were also many… decisions made that year, but we will leave those in the past. Then, on that fateful Friday in March, we got the news that school would be closed for the next two weeks because of some virus that started from someone… eating a bat?

As we all know, those two weeks turned into three, then four, then the entire rest of the school year. These were hard times for students and teachers alike, but even though we couldn’t be together in person, we still managed to make the best of quarantine.

When we came back sophomore year, everyone was hidden behind masks, and we had to stay six feet apart. There were also a handful of new teachers. One of the most memorable things about that year was Mr. Vaughn’s fourth hour biology class. It’s possible that more fun was had than science was learned, but we all graduated, and that is what really matters.

Junior year rolled around, but school still wasn’t completely normal. We still had some social distancing rules and hybrid block scheduling. Luckily, nothing crazy happened that year, but we did have to say goodbye to our friends in the grade above.

Then, we finally walked into our last “first day of school”. We started our senior year with college essays, applications, and tours. School wasn’t nearly as stressful as we knew it would be our last year. But the time went by quickly. It felt like we blinked and it was Christmas, we blinked again and it was Easter, we blinked again and we were on this stage. For me, personally, the year didn’t seem all that different from normal until the past couple of months. When people started counting down the days, reality really set in. I remember thinking, “These are the last times that we will all be together as a class,” and I think that brought us all even closer. We finished the year off getting accepted into our colleges, taking our final exams, and preparing for graduation. That leads us to today.

While it is a bittersweet moment having to say goodbye to each other, we are moving onto bigger and better things. In the words of the great Dr. Seuss, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” To end my speech today, I’d like to say this. The last 18 years have only been the first few chapters of our own stories. While we are now ending the high school chapter of our lives, we still have an entire story ahead of us.

Every single one of our stories will be unique; some of us are going off to college, others are heading into the workforce, and some may not know exactly what they will do, and that’s okay. To the graduating class of 2023, congratulations and good luck, we made it! Let us all start the first chapter of the rest of our lives. Thank you.

— Theodore Robisch