The Rockville High School Class of 2024, which began its high school years in the gloom of COVID-19, celebrated its graduation Wednesday evening, and then set off for all-night substance-free party. A huge crowd gathered in the courtyard at Rockville High School Wednesday and cheered the 224 graduating members of the Class of 2024 and the 212 who walked in the ceremony.
“No matter what life has thrown at you, you have embraced the challenges … and owned your failures, which ultimately led to your success,” Principal Jason Magao told the graduates. “You are a unique group of students in that I was not able to meet many of you until your sophomore year. I only knew many of you as ‘virtually present.’”
The class made the most of its time at Rockville High School, and is well-prepared for the future, Magao said. Some are headed to college, into the armed forces or into the work force.
“You are ready to discover, create, innovate and dominate,” he said. “My final request is that you challenge yourself every day to learn or create something new and inspiring because you are the future. You are going to be faced with things you never knew existed, but you have what it takes.”
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Joseph P. Macary also touched on the challenges the class faced during its freshman year.
“The last four years have been difficult ones for everyone in the world, but especially for you as seniors graduating today,” he said. “The one that I know for sure is that you persevered and demonstrated the attributes of our vision of the graduate – being a resilient individual.”
Salutatorian Katherine Larson, who will attend UConn in the fall, urged her classmates to speak up and to use their voices and intellect for good.
“We spend so much of our lives cutting out words and muting our message for the sake of complacency,” she said. “We avoid heartfelt discussions with our peers and skim the surface of our vocabularies to smooth conversation into its most shallow form.”
Valedictorian Natalie Crowley, who is headed to Amherst College, told the graduates that there are lessons from way back in kindergarten that remain valuable today: share everything, don’t hit people, clean up your mess, and look at what is happening around you.
She recalled an incident from kindergarten, when some classmates made fun of another student because she had a “My Little Pony” backpack they said was “babyish.” Like the girl with the backpack, Crowley said she liked to watch “My Little Pony.” But hearing those other kids pick on the girl made her no longer like the show.
“For the first time I chose not to look at the truth of who I was, out of fear,” she said. “Sometimes I wish my 5-year-old-self had been bolder and told those classmates that I too liked to watch “My Little Pony,” and that I had wanted that backpack.”
“Think back to your kindergarten-self,” Crowley continued. “Close your eyes and remember your first friends, your first day of school, and how it felt to do something you love. When was the last time you did that something? For the lucky ones it might have been yesterday, but for most it has been a pretty long time. The most important lesson I’ve learned is to never lose who you were in kindergarten.”
When the diplomas had been handed out and the ceremony was reaching its end, Class President Ross Sutherland stepped to the front of the class. Sutherland, who will soon head off for Plebe Summer and transition from a civilian to a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md, stood before his fellow graduates and led them in moving the tassel on their graduation caps from their right to the left side, which signifies they are graduates.
And then he and his classmates tossed their caps into the air to the loud cheers of the crowd.