This address to the 2017 commencement at Arlington High School was presented by Tarangana Thapa, honors speaker:
Class of 2017, parents, family and friends, AHS staff, teachers and the Arlington Community — good afternoon. It’s my greatest honor being up here speaking to you all today. This graduation holds a uniquely different meaning to each of us here.
To the community, it’s the continuation of decades long tradition of another successful class of young adults ready to take on the world and represent our Arlington roots.
To our teachers, guidance counselors and school administrators, our graduation is the annual tribute to their lifelong commitment and service in education.
To our parents today is bittersweet: They are sitting up there with smiles on their faces, proud as they can be — and yet a small part of them screams at the thought of us taking flight from the nest of nurture and support that they worked so hard to build.
But I want you to know, mom and dad, and to all the parents out there, we would have been lost without you.
Thank you for giving us (among many others) the two most important things in our lives: One, the guidance to help us find who we are and what we value; and two, the tools we need to go conquer our dreams. These are the things that we will be holding onto forever.
And to the graduating class: what does this commencement mean to us?
Today is simply a checkpoint of our academic careers, a time for us to pause and assess what we have so far before we continue marching on. These past four years have been individual journeys for us all — through the academic rigors of high school, through the experiences of adolescence — bringing some of us our first tastes of hardship and sorrow, happiness and true friendship and of course a sense of belonging and community.
And it’s when we weave together each one of these 300-plus individual experiences, we find ourselves with the collective story of the class of 2017.
My part of the story begins as a new kid. On the first day of freshman year, I walked into a sea of strangers — not a single person I could call a friend; the walls looming over me, the hallways having no end. I felt small and I felt lost.
It didn’t get any better the next couple of weeks as I struggled to find my place in the tumultuous high school social structure. Not for the first time in my life then, I felt insecure of who I was and what the people around me would think of me.
But I’m not telling you this now to ask for your sympathy. I’m telling you because the time has finally come for us to leave that bubble of security and comfort that we’ve unknowingly enveloped ourselves in. We’re heading into an even bigger world — where you can lead people toward where things may not always be fair, some people may not always be supportive and we may never get everything that we want.
When it feels like the world is beating down on us, the easiest thing to do is give up. But easy is not always good. We must remember that those moments of perceived weakness, insecurity and vulnerability do not define our character. What we choose to do in those moments and how we come out of it that truly matter in the end.
I took my isolation as an opportunity to observe the people and the world around me. And that’s when I began to notice that the greatest gift that you can give yourself is taking the time to remove your mask- and comfortable and proud of who you are.
It’s only then that we can focus on the bigger picture — our goals and dreams, so that when you go back to re evaluate days, months or even years later, we will find that time, and patience, and being true to ourselves allows life to fall into place.
It’s enlightening to look back at the journey of how something so unfamiliar can become something endearing. Those looming walls shrunk to fit perfectly around me, those winding hallways are now filled with memories. That sea of strangers turned into familiar faces, into acquaintances, into lifelong friends and a second family.
But as far as we’ve come, our journey ahead is even longer.
Sure, we’ll run into failures and hardships, but we will also showered by accomplishments. When we finally achieve those dreams that we have, we’ll feel content, we’ll feel proud.
But I ask that even in times of great happiness, don’t feel satisfied — because satisfaction is a threat to progress.
At the end of the day, success is not measured in personal achievement. That’s just one step. Success is measured by how we use our achievements to impact the society around us. Success is measured by how we use our knowledge and opinions to stand up for what is right in times of turmoil and polarization. Success is measured by how we take on global responsibilities of adulthood — to spread justice and equal access to opportunities to every nook and cranny of this planet.
We’re going into the real world where there are big issues — like poverty, climate change, education — will be forever plaguing society. Right now they may just big names to us. But day by day, they will become more tangible, until it becomes our responsibility to join the movement to create change to continue progress.
And the next four years is a time for us to build ourselves by exploring and absorbing and thinking.
What are the issues that matter most to you? How can you bend history into a direction of social progress, scientific and technological advancement? What do you want to be remembered for? And the biggest question of all: what can you do to make this world a better place?
These are the questions that we have to keep asking ourselves and seeking answers to for the rest of our lives.
Just the same as we conquered our last four years bit by bit, side by side, with each of us doing our little part, with our shared Arlington experience entangling our values and visions for the future, I am confident that together we can take on anything.
I wish you all the very best of luck in your personal and professional endeavors; I can’t wait to see all the change we can make in this world. Congratulations class of 2017.
This address was published Tuesday, June 6, 2017.
