“You’ve spent your whole life longing for the day you grow up and take life by its horns,” said Medomak Valley High School class of 2023 salutatorian Quinn Overlock, “until you actually get there.”
Members of the school’s graduating class actually got there on Wednesday, June 14 as they gathered to receive their diplomas and celebrate their achievements with family and friends, with teachers and mentors, and with each other.
Trishelle Ames and Cynthia Shelmerdine, class president and vice president, respectively, greeted the graduating class and spoke about their shared past and their diverging future.
“This is honestly so weird for us to be standing here in front of the kids we’ve grown up with remembering all the funny, the sad, and honestly quite embarrassing memories we’ve had together,” Shelmerdine said.
Ames recalled the first time members of the class gathered together as eighth graders, still new to the school. It happened after an exploding urinal required everyone to evacuate to the auditorium.
As those students, now assembled again as graduating seniors, prepare to leave the school that has been such a substantial part of their lives, Ames and Shelmerdine spoke to where members of the class are headed.
They noted that 51% of the class will join the workforce immediately, 44% will attend colleges or universities in Maine, and 6% will join the military, representing MVHS in all four branches and the U.S. National Guard.
Shelmerdine congratulated her classmates on completing their high school journey.
“We did it guys. We graduated. Or as my freshman math class would say, ‘we big-brained our way through high school,’” she said.
According to MVHS Principal Linda Pease, of the 118 graduates in the class of 2023, 45 received a total of $738,083 in scholarships.
In her speech, Overlock continued to ponder what it means to grow up through all the uncertainty that she and her classmates have faced over their years together.
“Don’t be scared,” she said.”You are right where you belong now. And when you’re in college, taking a gap year, in the workforce, or in the military, you’ll be right where you belong, too.”
Valedictorian Kylea Stone spoke to “this moment right here, right now,” noting that “tonight marks the end of one phase and the beginning of another.”
Stone encouraged her classmates to measure success in that next phase “in the amount of joy you feel when you wake up each morning, and how content you feel when you go to sleep each night. If you are happy with the life you have created, then you are successful.”
In a speech filled with pop culture references, science teacher Jennifer Hatch, selected by the class of 2023 as the featured speaker, shared words of wisdom that ranged from “the great philosopher Michael Scott,” of the NBC series “The Office,” to Macklemore to Walt Disney to Taylor Swift.
“There will be people who may not like your decisions but as long as those decisions ultimately help you grow and achieve your dreams, you need to accept that ‘the haters are gonna hate and the fakers are gonna fake,’” Hatch said. “So sometimes you’re just gonna have to shake it off.”
After each graduate crossed the stage, receiving diplomas and congratulations from Pease, RSU 40 Superintendent Steve Nolan, and Assistant Principals Tamra Philbrook and Matthew Carlson, Pease gave the class of 2023 their final instruction as MVHS students.
As blue and gold tassels migrated from right to left, a flurry of mortarboards flew into the air and Pease presented the 2023 graduates of MVHS to cheers of joy from the assembled crowd.
(LCN intern Frida Hennig contributed to this article.)
