Good afternoon parents, staff, and my fellow graduating class of 2022 members. Many of you already know me but for those who don’t my name is William Schnore. Some of you may be surprised to see me up here speaking at the podium rather than in the back running lights and sound. But here I stand with the honor of speaking at our graduation. I would like to speak for our class when I say thank you to all the teachers and mentors that helped us along the way, also all of you who dealt with our antics. Now is a time to reflect on all our years together in the district and especially all that we experienced in the last 4 years in high school. Our class has certainly had a different experience than many classes have had through these years, but we  are lucky to get to come back to Proctors and walk the same stage many students from Scotia-Glenville have walked in the past.

Many of you know how I enjoy working on tech in our theater for our school and drama club, but many of you may not know I also love to build things. It’s more than  just that. I love to build, fix, and design things, anything to do with tools really. Recently I designed and built the set for the schools 2021 fall show Clue with a couple of friends. Everything started with an idea from our director. Nice and simple, a wall with 6 doors and an opening. Alright, easy right? Well, there’s a few more steps to this process than going in and getting it done. First we needed a design so we could order materials and deal with supporting a wall on the stage without being able to screw it down to the stage at all. Once I had completed our design on my computer, it was time for us to start building. For this I called up my friends Addison and Michael and we got to work. We followed a list of what studs to cut and of course our design putting it all together. After the work to complete the frame we were left with a wall of studs with no doors. Now it was time to finish the wall, we put up panels and filled gaps, we put up trim, and then we put in our doors and painted. All of this makes this out to be very simple, but sometimes there can surely be some challenges.

Now that I stand here, having just told you a story about building a set for a show, a lot of you might be wondering what this has to do with graduation or school or even life for that matter. Well, it’s simple, life is like building. At least in the idea it has steps and processes and you might need some tools along the way. For start, that idea our director gave me and the design I created? That’s what you want to do, you choose your path and you try to find the correct way to go about it whether it’s to go to college or go into work, whether you want to someday have a family or not, or even if you want to go live in the city, or stick around and live in our town. Now with your design you have to build. When I am building something of course I love to have all my tools with me so that I can face whatever I might need to do, but let’s face it, a drill isn’t going to help you out in all situations. This is where we remember what else I made sure I had for the build of the set, my friends. Friends are the tools you get to call upon when you’re in a bind and need help, and they get to call upon you when they need your help. This is a great reason to have your friends close, because you never know when you’re going to need to cut a 2×4, oh wait, that would be a circular saw, eh hem, I mean move a couch maybe. Finally in the build we come to finish work. Where we put up the trim and paint the walls. This step may be the hardest to define in the human condition, but what I think it best relates to would be the enjoyment of our labor. To step back and take it all in. Once you put up that trim and paint you get to step back and take in the glory of your plan all put together. You get to finally rest and reap the rewards of your plan and the hard work you put into your life.

These past 4 years of high school were like a small set we had to build. We made plans and worked to achieve them. The obstacle we faced was fitting 4 years of high school experiences into 2 and a half years all while the time continued to fly by. While our time to work was cut short that’s ok. Because when we look around our audience and we see our friends and family, we start to see that things did begin to work out for us. We made new friends, and of course we Graduated! And that is great news, it means we all get to start the great time of a new build! We all are going to do great things, and become greater leaders, helping to work through our problems and our nation’s problems as we become the next leaders. Never forget what values you hold dear and make the changes you want to see, because when you go out to build, you always know you have your friends and those who believe in you and your ideas.

Congratulations class of 2022! Let’s celebrate our hard work and appreciate everything we and our friends put together!