Year 12 Valedictory 2023

Year 12 Valedictory:

I enjoyed spending this past Friday evening with our graduating class of 2023 and their families to celebrate the culmination of their journey through Preshil. Some of the highlights from the evening included odes recited for each graduate acknowledging the special contributions they made to their class and the school and celebrating their unique qualities. In addition to congratulating them on a fun, playful, creative muck up day that that epitomized what muck up day shenanigans should be. I shared the following passage with them from Rilke’s Letters to a young poet and discussed with them not just the courage to question which we are all familiar with at Preshil, but also the patience to question:

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

After hearing graduates Luca, Baylee, and Josh share reflections on their time and Preshil and gratitude towards their teachers, the students paraded through an honor guard created by their families and made their way down to the Arlington Campus. They entered the Kevin Borland Hall that had been decorated to the nines by Arlington students and staff and shared a feast in addition to more memories and gratitude with each other and their teachers.

We wish our graduating students well and look forward to keeping in touch with them as they continue their journey beyond Preshil.