PARIS – More than a thousand family members and friends of the Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School’s Class of 2006 crowded into the gymnasium after wet weather forced commencement ceremonies indoors on Saturday. A few hundred more watched the proceedings on a movie screen in the auditorium.
Salutatorian Molly Merz told her classmates how being a student in a sophomore English class taught by her father, Richard Merz, helped her to take control of her high school experience and make it her own. “When I first found out I was going to be in my dad’s class,” she said, “I did everything I could to get out of it.”
Merz was not able to change her schedule, though, and spent half of the year unhappy and uncomfortable in her father’s class. Then, she said, “I decided that I had the power to change this year around and make it a good one.” She and her father began to have long talks, lasting late into the night, about “everything from God to the Holocaust.” She began spending her free time in her father’s classroom and finally “began to feel lucky that I was placed in his class and able to share time with him.”
As graduation approached and she visited colleges, Merz said she grew aware that her father was saddened by these changes in her life. She assured her classmates and her father, who listened from the bleachers, that “I’ll always be his little girl; it’s just time for me to move on and start the next part of my life.”
Later in the evening, as Principal Theodore Moccia conferred diplomas upon the 212 graduating seniors, Richard Merz stepped in to give his daughter her diploma and a hug. Assistant Superintendent of Schools Mark LaRoach also gave a diploma to his son, David, as did Moccia, to his daughter, Kittrena.
In her address, Valedictorian Caitlin Stauder told her classmates that “high school has been such a roller coaster of choices, emotions and experiences. I have flourished and failed, succeeded and made mistakes.” Most importantly, though, Stauder said she began to discover herself.
As she listened to classmates complain about their workload, Stauder realized that her work ethic is an important part of what makes her who she is. Always completing assignments on time, though, earned her the label “overachiever” from her classmates.
Stauder urged her peers to spend time doing something they are passionate about, in order to enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes from doing something well. “My thought is,” she said, “if you try as hard as possible, push it with everything you have, there will be limited regrets, and somewhere along the line, you will be rewarded.”
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