Valedictorian Meloney Simpson's graduation speech

There are thousands of clichés that we’ve all heard time and time again from family, friends and professors hoping to give us well wishes and good advice for our future endeavors. There are some clichés, of course, that are truly inspirational. For example, they tell us not to count our chickens before they hatch so that we don’t get our hopes up too high; they tell us not to look a gift horse in the mouth so that we may always be grateful; and they tell us not to put all of our eggs in one basket so that we can have multiple opportunities to succeed. By listening to what these clichés really mean, we have the potential to become better and wiser. They have succeeded in their purpose of providing inspiration. Sadly, not all clichés are as valuable. There are five particular clichés, in this case points of advice, that need to be re-examined and omitted from our consciousness because they inhibit our personal expansion and our pursuit of happiness. These clichés are as follows:

The first is to have both feet on the ground. To have both feet on the ground is to be practical and realistic. Why, my fellow graduates, would we want to be practical and realistic at a time like this? If we are only practical and we don’t conjure unattainable dreams in our minds, if we are only realistic and we don’t wonder what could happen if…, we will never progress. It’s like the saying goes, if we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll always get what we’ve always got. The only way to break free from monotony and to experience something else is to dream it, and to dream it requires forgoing practicality and realism. The practical, realistic people are those who wake up one day, and look in the mirror only to discover that they’re middle-aged and balding, and they suddenly realize that they have been stuck in the same unsatisfying job for the past twenty years. We must not become these people. We must instead consistently work toward what we truly desire out of life, whether or not our dreams are practical or realistic. We must be insatiable in our quest to find our inspirations. With that in mind, we turn to the next cliché:

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. A quote first uttered by Benjamin Franklin and treasured by Professor Zerillo, the cliché is certainly of value, but not universally. Of course there is a great need to plan. We must plan our future so that we don’t turn into that middle-aged, bald man and wake up to find half our lives gone. The day-to-day planning, however, is often unnecessary, as it is life’s spontaneity that allows us to have the most fun and make the most memories. Take, for example, a day we’ll all remember, sophomore year when we lost power all day because of rain, and school was cancelled. It was an April day, so although chilly, it wasn’t unbearable. I remember looking out my window in Carmel and seeing a giant home-aid slip n’ slide constructed from a bright blue Home Depot tarp, covered in detergent, sprawled out on the lawn in front of Feeney. There were no plans involved in constructing this slip n’ slide. It was raining, it was warmish, and school was cancelled. A recipe for fun and facebook pictures, students from all over campus came out of hiding and emerged into the downpour to enjoy this original creation. Memories like that can’t be planned—they just happen. As they say, life is what happens while you’re making other plans. Yes, it’s important to be prepared for the future, but it’s also important to remember to lighten up and enjoy the moment that you’re in.

Similarly, the next cliché, that we can’t see the forest through the trees, speaks of seeing the details of an event rather than the big picture. In our cases, the details don’t matter; it is the big picture, the main event, that we seek to remember. This past month, in the whirlwind of senior activities and last minute projects, tests, and papers, on top of job applications and interviews, I know I personally have lost sight of the big picture. It has been hard to focus on making the most of the last time we’ll spend living with the friends we’ve grown to know and love these past four years, as we’ve had so much here-and-now work to do, but this is when that big picture is ever more important. It is now, on our graduation day, that we must realize the details don’t matter. We’ll never remember our grade on that huge test or how many points we got off for incorrect APA style on that major paper; those are just details. We’ll remember the big picture: the friends, the professors, the weekends. If we stay focused on the big picture, the ultimate goal, and remember that the details don’t matter, we can worry less and enjoy more.

The next cliché, don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today, is my mother’s favorite saying. It makes sense, but only in theory. The cliché advises us to get ahead today so that we may rest tomorrow. It tells us to take immediate action without wasting time. For example, as some of you may remember, sophomore year, a few nameless members of our class decided not to wait for the rest of the campus to catch on to the idea of being green, and they took actions into their own hands. They attempted to provide the Quads with more oxygen when they uprooted a tree and dragged it inside. The example, although extreme, shows us that sometimes it’s better to wait. That is not to say that procrastination is the way to go, but to always attempt to get ahead is to waste time as well. Never waste time that could be spent having fun. Time isn’t wasted if you enjoy wasting it.

The last of the five clichés is one that we’re all greatly familiar with: leave the past in the past. Maybe some of us would like to forget about our pasts, but as of today, Saint Joe’s is part of our past, and I don’t want to forget that. We, as alums of the college, can no longer say that we’re students here; we can no longer dial 3333 from under our warm covers to hear the dreaded message say, “at the present time, there are no class cancellations;” and we will no longer be greeted by Debbie, who already has our ice coffee poured when she sees us coming down the hall. If we leave our experiences here at Saint Joe’s in our past, we are leaving behind irreplaceable friendships, a wealth of knowledge and countless memories. To appreciate what we had while we were here, we must never think of this place as our past, but instead as a means to our future.

We have accomplished what we came to Saint Joe’s to do, and that is to learn, to graduate, to get a degree, to make lifelong friendships and witness and experience things we never thought possible. We danced the night away in the Chalet, gripping our highlighters freshman year; we lay on the soccer field, staring up at the night’s sky in search of the promised meteor shower sophomore year; we watched Brendan Michaud, decked out in hot pink spandex, get crowned Mr. SJC junior year; we cheered on the basketball team when they beat Emmanuel in overtime to win the GNAC conference this year. Throughout the last four years, and in the past week especially, we, as a class, have bonded into a community of friends. And, as a friend, I wish each and every one of you only the best in your future.