This is the salutatory address delivered during Rockdale High School commencement exercises by Stephani Pantaleon.
Good evening students, parents, school board members, staff and guests.
Welcome to the Class of 2019 Rockdale High School Graduation ceremony. I am Stephani Pantaleon and it is with great honor that I stand before you tonight.
To begin, I would like to extend a proper thank you, to all the people that have seen us through our journey.
Our journey that consisted of 13 school years, that will end tonight with us walking off of this field with a diploma in our hands, but remember we didn’t go through this journey alone.
We were accompanied by our amazing teachers, our counselors, our assistant principals, our principal, and most of all our loving parents and family.
I would like to thank all the moms and dads for their much needed parenting, guidance, and, most of all, patience.
Being a teenager is hard, but parenting one of us seems harder, at times even impossible. Parents, you should feel accomplished as well; we made it.
I personally cannot thank my mother enough, she is my rock; her strength amazes me.
She always pushes me to be my best and knows how to ease my stress, so thank you mom.
And to my dad, I love you and thanks for making me laugh my whole life even when I wanted to cry.
I’d like to thank all the grandparents for their unthinkable love, support, and wisdom. Thank you to all aunts, cousins, and uncles. Thank you to all the siblings.
And a special thank you to my sisters Samantha, Sabrina, Scarlett and my brother Cade, you are my best friends for life.
A special thanks to Mr. Lampert who has taught some of us for three years; I have learned that math problems can seem endless, but that anything is possible with hard work and dedication.
Thank you to our administrators, Mrs. Whitsel for never giving up on us, Mr. Hasselbach and Mrs. Pantaleon, my mom, for holding us accountable. Our counselors, Mrs. Windham and Mrs. Ingram for helping us figure out our future.
Furthermore, as we are gathered here tonight to celebrate our graduation from Rockdale High School, I am reminded about how much our class has been through.
We were the first class to spend three years in the newly built intermediate school and we will be the first class to graduate on the new Rockdale Tiger Stadium.
Most of us have attended Rockdale schools since we were in kindergarten.
I remember having to cross the sidewalks in elementary school with tiger tails and bubbles in our mouth to get to Mrs. Fletcher’s art class.
And in intermediate school when we asked Mr. Streck to put our straws in our Capri Suns and he would place the Capri sun on its back and stab a hole with the straw right in the middle of it. Or when we asked him to help us peel a banana and he’d break it in half.
Then our lives really got confusing and awkward at the same time when we got to junior high, where there were no more tiger tales, walking to class in lines, or worst of all no more nap times.
We had to adjust to using lockers, having a passing period, and playing our first team sports as a Rockdale Tiger. For the first time, we were really on our own.
Finally, we came to our last hurdle, high school.
These last four years at Rockdale High School flew by and just yesterday I remember being a scared freshman and having to shag all the balls for the varsity players at two-a-days or being a sophomore and sitting in Mr. Marrero’s class with my close friend Lyndsey Kolar and listening to him say “Calla!” every few minutes.
We all have been through thick and thin, became professional procrastinators, overslept, underslept, and then stayed up all night just to do 158 calculus review problems.
And as time has passed, we have been shaped into the people we are today, our life lessons that we have learned from our teachers and from this small town of Rockdale, will help us with our journey after high school.
And standing in front of you now, I cannot believe that we are all going our separate ways as our days at Rockdale High School come to an end, but remember we will always be a Rock-dale Tiger.
Today, friends and classmates, as we close the door on one chapter of our lives and prepare to take on the next, I’d like to present you with a quote by Louis E. Boone:
“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.”
So I leave you with these words of advice:
Face your fears and don’t be afraid to fail.
Conquer all challenges. Be open to new and bigger things, but always be humble. Be courageous and stay true to yourself. Accept the talents that God has given each and every one of us.
Embrace life and create your destiny.
Class of 2019, it is our time.
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