PARIS — Saturday was a day of looking back and to the future for more than 200 seniors graduating from Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School.

It was standing room only at the Don Gouin Athletic Complex, with seats and bleachers packed with proud family and friends of the Class of 2011.

In her address, valedictorian Montana Mawhinney told seniors to close their eyes and think back to their best memory from the past four years.

She told them to remember junior year, when the homecoming football game went into six overtimes. “The whole crowd was up on their feet cheering,” Mawhinney recalled. She said to remember the teachers, family and friends who got them through.

“Capture the happiness you felt during that memory,” she told her class. “Whenever you feel lost or afraid, think about the happy memory or the lesson that you learned.”

Sarah Smith, the class salutatorian, encouraged graduates to become “dream catchers.”

“Dreams can change any time,” she said. “The important thing is to have them.”

Commencement speaker Timothy P. Wilson of the Seeds of Peace camp in Otisfield gave seniors advice for life through a series of anecdotes.

Wilson was the director of the Seeds of Peace International Camp in Otisfield and the Seeds of Peace Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem until 2006. He now serves as special adviser to Seeds of Peace.

He spoke of his own graduating class. He said he still talks to his former classmates. A friend who graduated 80th in a class of 81 grew up poor but became a millionaire, Wilson said.

He encouraged graduates to keep up with technology and discussed his own resistance when he was given a BlackBerry for work. “When we had people in Gaza, I realized how important that cell phone was.”

Now, he said, he’s on his computer so much that his wife calls him a nerd. “Stay current. If you don’t, you won’t get where you want to,” he said.

He told the seniors to know when to listen. At Seeds of Peace, participants “sit down and learn how to listen to each other.” He said everyone should do the same.

After diplomas were presented, class President Allie Bell led a candle-lighting ceremony. The candlelight symbolizes “the unity that we all share and will continue to share after tonight,” Bell said.

“As you blow out your candles,” she told her classmates, “never let it extinguish.”

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