June 5, 2024
Below is a speech given by Tadd Cavanaugh the Class of 2024 Class President at Hingham High Schools’s Class of 2024 Graduation ceremony:
Hello, I am Tadd Cavanaugh, the senior class president, and as class president, one of my privileges granted to me is to give a speech at graduation, bestowing some of the wisdom I have collected over my “lengthy” 18 years of life. While I don’t necessarily know where to start, I do have a story.
A story that begins as I frantically sprint to my car, with a backpack bouncing up and down. I weave and bob through a flood of far-lot commuters. I jump in my car and connect to aux while throwing off my jeans and tee shirt and replacing them with my gym clothes. I peel out of the far lot, cut off a mom who, for some reason, is picking her kid up in the far lot, and buzz over to the gym. I repeat this process for two more activities, and by the end of this exhausting day, I have about a whole wardrobe of clothes in my trunk.
Fortunately, I am not alone in this battle to cram activities, as all my classmates committed long before High School to this brotherhood, this fellowship, of what I like to call the awkward changing-your-clothes-in-car shuffle. Unfortunately, this shuffle results from a lack of time that we multi-faceted students have, which has forced me and others to leap from one thing to the next to ensure our timely arrival in our proper attire. I was often frustrated that we could never wear two different uniforms at the same time. If I didn’t have to do that dance with my clothes in the car, I could calmly stroll from one activity to another. Yet, I know it would be foolish to wear my baseball pants to school or my jeans to baseball, but sometimes I wished I could! Instead, I carry a backpack full of clothing and different outfits for my other roles throughout the day. I am not the only one with a drawstring bag because I see the so many talented classmates who sit before me.
While a cap and gown unify us all as scholars and graduates, underneath this red cloak, IDEALLY, you are wearing clothes, and each style you wear represents a piece of you. Embrace this piece of you, but recognize you have an entire closet at home or, for many, an entire drawstring bag in your car. You are not just a student. You are not a sports jersey, nor are you a completely black outfit for a band or orchestra concert, nor are you a costume for the Little Shop of Horrors play, nor are you a polo shirt for the math team– you are all of these outfits. It is the many pieces you tuck away in your drawstring bag that define you.
As we continue forward, and enter a wider world than the one we know at Hingham High School, recognize not just the outfits others wear but also their fully stuffed drawstring bag alongside them. Be empathetic and understanding of the clothing people tuck away. Remember, the teacher you are pestering with emails about an extension is dressed as a mom or dad yet still wears their teacher’s shirt as they answer your email. Remember, while a player’s football or hockey gear may smell today, I promise you they have a closet full of clean clothes they’ll wear tomorrow. Remember that no matter how hard you try to prepare an outfit, Mr.Swanson will always look cleaner. Remember that Mr. Swanson not only wears the uniform of a Principal but also that of a wonderful baseball coach, a mentor, and an excellent father who will be missed when his wardrobe changes to the Silver Lake’s AD. Remember, no matter how nice you look or Coach Q looks at the seasonal sports meeting, Coach Q’s mic will still not work. Remember that a pair of boring sweatpants for a half day can turn into swim trunks as you swim through the Great October Half-day flood as an early release becomes an early-early release. Remember, while someone wears a Jersey Mikes, Nonas, Caffe Tosca, or whatever work outfit they choose, they are also a student, a friend, and much more than just their charming work uniforms.
Remember, you can always have a drawstring bag, and you do not just need one outfit, nor do you need to be the outfit people want you to wear. And most importantly, remember everybody has the capacity to change their wardrobe.
Class of 2024, advisors, class parents, Ellie, Logan, and Isabell, it has been a pleasure serving and working with you….Let’s hear it for the Class 2024. To new uniforms! Thank you.
Below is a speech given by Jack Burns the Class of 2024 Valedictorian at Hingham High Schools’s Class of 2024 Graduation ceremony:
Good morning! I’d like to start by thanking everyone who has helped us to makeit to today. Although each of us pursued our own unique paths here in Hingham,we all have the same people to thank for making these journeys possible.
First, thank you to our parents and guardians. You ensured we made it to everyday of school, every sports practice or game, and every rehearsal andperformance. You were also there to support us when schoolwork piled up andwhen we wanted another pair of eyes to look over our essays at 11:50 at night.Mom, if you hadn’t forced me to learn how to ride a bike all those years ago, Iprobably still wouldn’t know how to.
Thank you to our teachers. The unfathomable number of hours that you spendcreating comprehensive and captivating lessons, answering our questions eachday, and grading all of the projects we complete does not go unnoticed. Youcreate a magical environment for us where we can discuss difficult topics butalso have fun.
Thank you to the band for bringing music to this ceremony. Though I myself didnot become involved in the music department at Hingham High, I have heardexceptional things from my friends about how much fun you all have in theenvironment provided by the music teachers.
Thank you to the custodial staff for keeping the building clean and operational,as well as for arming and disarming the alarms on the doors every single day.
Thank you to the School Committee and everyone else who works tirelessly tokeep our school system running.
Thank you to Harbor Media for recording and live streaming this ceremony sothat our friends and family who could not make it today can still observe thisimportant milestone. My grandparents were not able to make it and it meanseverything that they can still hear me speak today.
Thank you to the guidance department for helping all of us reach the next stepsin our lives after high school. I would like to personally thank Mrs. Turner for allof the work she put in recently to help me with my own college process.
Finally, to the administrative staff, thank you for managing all of our school’sneeds. Mr. Swanson, we cannot thank you enough for your 17 years ofleadership at Hingham High and wish you the best of luck at Silver Lake. I reallymean it when I say future classes will miss you sorely.
Seen as how the Class of 2024 is the last class whose years at Hingham Highwere affected by remote and hybrid learning, I sincerely hope this is the last yearwhere Hingham’s graduation speeches reference the pandemic and we can allfinally move on. Entering high school from our homes was a surreal experience.Through these times of limited interaction, we, fortunately, were still able toparticipate in most sports and clubs in some fashion that allowed us to stayconnected with each other. I’m extremely thankful for the work that went intoensuring that these activities could continue safely, as they truly made thedifference in the transition into our high school years.
For me, my major source of connection was the Hingham Rowing Team. Mypast boat-mate and the Class of 2023 valedictorian Nathan Tesler spoke lastyear at graduation about how every member of a boat shares every success andfailure. I think that it is because of this that the relationships between boat-mates are so strong. Each member of the boat takes on a sense of personal
responsibility for the success or failure of everyone.
Last weekend my boat set out with a goal to beat Duxbury at the statechampionship, which was the last-ever race for the seniors in the boat. We lost. Ilike winning, but I prefer the memory of a hardly-fought race where everyonesacrificed everything for each other. I know for a fact that no one in my boatcould have given more during the race and that is the win. It is easy to losemotivation toward a personal goal when achieving it gets hard. It is much moredifficult if not impossible to lose motivation when you feel responsible forsomeone else failing to achieve their goal.
Graduates, these past four years we have all been in the same boat, fighting forthe same goals, and feeling some degree of responsibility for one another’ssuccess. Without you all, I would not be standing here now. We’ve shared notesand Quizlet sets with each other so we could all succeed on tests. We’vecheered on one another at races and games to bring pride to our sports teams.We’ve also attended concerts and performances to support our very talentedmusicians and actors. All of our greatest successes come from the support ofeach other.
In the race I mentioned, we lost by quite the landslide, a whopping 1.2 seconds.When a race is that close the officials actually share a photo of the boatscrossing the finish line because the difference is literally inches. Keep in mindthe race is 1500 meters… or just over… 59,000 inches. Yes, I just did that in myhead—thank you, Mrs. Knoblock. In the end, only a few inches made up thedifference.
I bring this up because life is all about inches. Though they feel like nothingsignificant, when we look back and see just how many have added up, werealize just how far we’ve gone.
In the words of a renowned French philosopher—no not Voltaire—our very ownMr. Piantes, “French, like life, is cumulative.” I hated when he said that becauseit meant I had to review all the vocabulary words from earlier sections in additionto the new words. I guess I have to admit that mastering those hundreds ofwords did improve my vocabulary.
The seemingly most insignificant parts of life add up to the most significantachievements. Inches, words, steps, add up to miles, entire languages, andmarathons. As we go off and explore our own unique paths outside of Hingham,I advise you to not take the small things for granted. Don’t underestimate thevalue of a second, cherish little memories, and don’t wish time away.
My own journey with Hingham Public Schools started in kindergarten 13 yearsago. I still remember being in Foster school, learning the reason why there was a24 in my school email, and counting how many Christmases away that year was.It seemed like it would take forever to get there, and maybe you felt the sameway back then, but here we are. Fun fact: I added up all the 4 minute passingperiods we had over the past 4 years and it ends up being a little over 11 daysstraight. Small moments add up, inch by inch, and now we’re graduating.
Thank you all, and congratulations Class of 2024!
Below is a speech given by Simran Vaishnava the Class of 2024 Salutatorian at Hingham High Schools’s Class of 2024 Graduation ceremony:
Good afternoon to all the families, Hingham Public Schools staff, wonderfully supportivemembers of the community, and my dear fellow members of the class of 2024 gathered here tocelebrate our graduation! It is truly a surreal moment, and I’m grateful to be sharing it with thiscommunity of people that has come to mean so much to me over the years.To put those of you who worked so hard for us where you belong (first, that is), I wouldlike to begin this speech with a sincere thank you. Thank you to all the dedicated andknowledgeable teachers who guided us to the point we are now. Thank you to theadministration, the custodial staff, the lunch staff, and everyone else who keeps the schoolrunning as efficiently and beautifully as it does. I will forever be impressed by Hingham High’sstaff because of our school’s quick reaction to the flooding of the 220s hallway; despite the tallswamp of water filling the floor, everyone pulled together to solve the problem and get us toschool the next day. The same was true for the unfortunately hidden gallon of milk in a ceilingtile; within a day of the nauseating stench’s appearance in the halls, someone was able to findthe milk in the ceiling and clean up the mess when (this is what I was told) the milk explodeddue to the gasses trapped in the container from its rotting. For any members of the Class of2023 present today, your senior prank will be forever imprinted on our noses.
Thank you to the kind and compassionate guidance officers who help us with thehardest decisions. Thank you to paraeducators for helping our students succeed. Thank you tothe PTO and to our class officers for organizing the class of 2024 throughout many wonderfulevents. Thank you to all my classmates for always being on my side as we fought throughthings like research papers, group projects, and eventually postsecondary decisions. I’m forevergrateful that I got to spend four years of high school with you. Last but never least, thank you tomy family for being so loving and supportive over all these years, even when I’m at my silliest,while also pushing me to be my best – I love you dearly.
Now, I would be remiss if I also didn’t open this speech with a few words of heartfeltcongratulations to my fellow graduates. These past thirteen years have been a marathon; wehave ached, we have soared, we have fallen down, but we have ultimately achieved so, somuch. Now, we have reached the finish line of this particular challenge, and every single one ofus made it out on top by working to completion. For this accomplishment, we have earned ouraches and our stumbles just as much as we have earned our diplomas. Those moments of pain,though unbearable at times, are the catalysts that drive us to change. In some way or another, Ican confidently say that across the years, we have indeed all changed.
We have changed in our mannerisms, and in our attitudes. Our view on formalizededucation, for instance, has probably shifted as we reach the end – I know mine did. We havecertainly changed in our capabilities – most of us can now drive and/or vote, somethingunimaginable to our younger selves. (For those of you who can do neither, don’t worry! I’m inthe same situation!) Over the years, we have grown in several aspects of ourselves that arecrucial in building our identities.So, does that mean our growth and changes inform who we are, fundamentally? I doubtthere’s actually an objective answer. In fact, I have the opposite: a somewhat confusinganecdote!
When I was in third grade, my neighbor graduated high school. This was completelyunfathomable to young me; that girl in her maturity was basically a different species from myselfback then. Graduating high school was not even a concept to me at that point in my life, simplybecause I was a student, and it was strange to consider shifting the definition of myself fromstudent to… something else. When I did graduate from high school, it would be because someadult spirit swooped down from the sky one day and kicked my little kid spirit out.
Thankfully, I am here to report that I have not, to this day, been possessed by any sort ofspirit! (Yay!) It may have yet to happen, though, so if you see me writhing uncontrollably later, ormy eyes rolling back in my head, it’s probably just the adult spirit settling in. The personspeaking to you right now from this podium is still me.
However, there is one thing from that story that stood out to me: every time I referred tomyself, I specified that it was me from the past. I didn’t consider that version of myself to beaccurate enough to warrant the use of the pronoun “me” on its own.
Even though I am me, and that little girl was me, she no longer is me. (I told you thiswould get confusing!) When I think of that little girl, I think of her as exactly that: some little girl.She no longer composes the bulk of my identity as she once did. I have changed and grownmiles since then. For me, at least, my growth played a huge role in who I consider myself to be.Whether or not I changed fundamentally is a bit more of a gray area.
For better or for worse, we are no longer our selves of the past. We will never be thosepeople again. We can strive for an ideal left behind across the years, but our past selves can beno more than an intimate acquaintance because that person is singular, isolated in time.Picture, for instance, a dotted line. As that line progresses in space, it leaves behindindividual dots. The trajectory of those dots can be considered a line with a general pattern, buteach dot is still individual because it is defined by its location on the x axis. Each person, everysingle one of us, could be considered a dotted line. The dots represent each version ofourselves, isolated not in space, but rather in time, and the accumulation of our dots creates asketch of who we are as a person. My line starts somewhere simple; I was a little girl who lovedplaying Four Square and who was terrified of thunderstorms and tornadoes. Somewhere alongthe way, I outgrew that fear, so I became another dot. When I discovered my love for reading,yet another dot was drawn. As each of those changes in me occurred, my person grew furtherand further removed from the little girl I started out as.
These dotted lines have incredible potential because they are not graphed by one rigidfunction that is always drawn the same; they are graphed by humans. Humans who oscillate,who grow, who strive for beautiful ideals, who make mistakes, who are sometimes victims, butwho are also victors.
I will also offer something I have observed and that I personally find encouraging: it doesnot matter where your dot is right now. I can say this in plain words: it does not matter who youare right now. Like the good little calculus student I am, I have observed that it is the slope andthe way you are changing that matters. If you are in a hard part of your life and you do not likethe person you have become because of it, that situation does not define you so much as thesteps you take to change it. Just like no line can ever truly reach infinity, no one can ever reachthe perfect ideal of a person crafted by society. Rather, we are defined by the choices we makethat reflect our growth or decay. By making the choice to better yourself, you are already on theway.
Now that we are looking towards the future, we can see a storm of change darkening onthe horizon as we leave this familiar life of a student and become something more. It’s startingto sprinkle, but we all know a downpour is inevitable. Throughout these four years of highschool, not only have we been building knowledge, skills, and social bonds that will help us inlife to come, we have been defining ourselves and the type of person we want to become.Through all this hard work, I hope that knowledge will be a beacon of light in the storm ofuncertainty that is about to come. Let the slope of your ideals and goals guide where you aregoing, as I know each of you is so capable of doing. I know, for instance, there are someamazing athletes among us who have their eyes set on collegiate-level victories next year. Stillothers are off to military academies to work their way into the armed forces. Some of you haveyour eyes on a vocational calling, while others are drawn to a field of study. By keeping focus onthose goals, I know you will not only make your future institution proud, you will make yourhometown proud. I cannot wait to see the amazing things each and every one of you will do asthe x axis of time marches steadily onwards on all of our graphs.
Congratulations again, my fellow members of the class of 2024, and good luck with allthat the future may bring!
Below is a speech given by Isabel McCabe the Class of 2024 Chosen Student Speaker at Hingham High Schools’s Class of 2024 Graduation ceremony:
Hello, for those of you who don’t know me, I am Isabel McCabe, champion of the close-lotparking raffle and your 2024 student speaker. While it is scary being in front of all of you, as Iwalked up here I remembered something even scarier. I realized I forgot and never told my momthat I was speaking today. So first and foremost I would like to apologize to those sitting aroundher. She is either incredibly emotional or incredibly upset with me. Most likely a mix of both.
All jokes aside, I am so proud to say that I have graduated with such an incredible group ofpeople. Before writing this, I began to think about a word that could describe us as a class.“Unhealthily competitive over our grades” is five words so I knew I couldn’t use that. Aftersome thinking, I settled on intent. In the past four years, I have seen how intent many of you areto make a positive difference in the world. We are intent on becoming leaders. We are intent onbeing good people. We are intent on bending the rules in Senior Assassin. And on Fridays, weare intent on getting to the front of the line for Big Daddy’s pizza.
This intention would not be possible without the incredible administration at HHS. I would justlike to pause for a moment and give a round of applause for all the staff who made our senioryear so memorable, especially those who do it behind closed doors. Every morning, I got to go tothe main office for morning announcements. Although coughing, sneezing, stuttering, and evenpromposing over the loudspeaker has been fun, what I looked forward to the most was spendingthe six minutes between A and B block with two of the most hardworking women I have evermet: Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Skinner. If any of you don’t know Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Skinner,the devil works hard but they work 10x harder. Every morning, we laughed together, gossiped,and more than anything, yawned.
It is also necessary to thank not just my teachers, but all of our teachers in the building. I think Ispeak for everyone when I say that you have enabled our interest in learning and helped shapewho we are as young adults today. To show my gratitude, I will be finding you all on Instagram!None of you are safe from my follow requests, especially Ms. Petrie, Mrs. Allen, Ms. Roth, Mr.Haflin, Ms. Garland, and Mr. Minihane.
To my classmates who had to hear me on the loudspeaker every morning, thank you for at leastpretending to listen. From being glared at by the golf team after accidentally announcing awinning match as a loss, to hearing a group of sophom*ores ask each other what they thought “thegirl with the annoying voice on the announcements actually looked like” (I was right behind
you), you all made sure to keep me humble. If I don’t run into you at Gourmet Garden karaokenight a few years down the line, this will be the last time many of you hear my voice on amicrophone. Bittersweet.
Before I sit down I wanted to share with you something my mom didn’t go a day without tellingme during the difficult points of senior year: you will end up where you are supposed to be. Letme say it again. you will end up where you are supposed to be. From the bottom of my heart, Icannot wait to see all of the great places we end up in as a class.
I hope everyone has a great day, congratulations to the class of 2024, and please bother TaddCavanaugh with any reunion-related questions. My time as secretary has been served. Thankyou.
