News & Events 2008-2009

Valedictory Address, Commencement Day, May 21, 2009
By Travis Forbes Perlee ’09

Does anyone else find this utterly ridiculous? Just a mere 200 weeks ago, we were getting out of eighth grade, not realizing just how soon we would be graduating from Blair Academy. Who could have thought that this is what it would come down to? As opposed to whatever we were thinking about at the time, like what puberty is, or if dorm life was as scary as the rumors foretold. Now, we see that the Blair experience is summarized with just a few people making a few speeches, most of which none of us will ever remember except whether it was good or bad.

I wish there were something fresh or memorable for me to say to the class of ’09. I could say something about topology, but unfortunately, that’s too freeform and abstract for me to realistically explain. Or talk about the scientific method, and how the first two years of my Blair experience were just one huge failed experiment: trying to succeed by caring more about grades than about learning, but no real scientist uses the scientific method anymore. Or the Theory of Everything, which sounds really cool, but not even the best physicists in the world can tell you what it is. Instead I’m going to talk about something we all know very well: the Blair Class of ’09, for it is we who are important today, for we are the ones who pushed through, who kept our heads down and worked our butts off.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired; French 4AP and 2 a.m. McDonald’s runs can do that to you. I want to get out of here. I love Blair, but there comes a point when all great things must come to an end, and that end is now for us. And what a great ending it is. We have been the first class to experience the new Commons and Athletic Center, the first class to live on abbreviated hours of sleep as freshmen, the last class to shout out their name at school meeting, the last class to walk these halls with one of the greatest teachers ever to grace them, Dr. Clarke.

I don’t know if we are leaving a mark on this campus the same way Dr. Clarke has, or the way the new field house has, but we have shown what a high school class can do. While many say that a team is better than individuals, and a united class we are not, I say that high school is just the precursor to the game, the summer camp the athletes attend so that they can better their fall sport. While they must all work together for those short weeks, their alliances inevitably lie in their real team. And Blair is one of the greatest prep schools for that; if you were to look at who is going where, I believe the number of students attending great colleges is 100%. It is there where we will find our main competition, where we can find just how well prepared we are to have a winning season.

And it is at college that one must find a niche, a passion to pursue. One can go through a camp without caring about the games one plays, for really, one can be lazy for just a few days, but one cannot go through an entire season of competing, winning and losing without the support and passion of a team. One cannot go through life without something to hold onto and claim as one’s own. A passion, a desire, a goal is needed. For if one has a passion, many of the bothersome trivialities in life are dwarfed by the fondness and excitement of going to work and immersing oneself in that love. A passion makes work and play the same, and the weekends become the dregs of life. It’s satisfying and fun to know that what you are doing is benefiting the world at no expense to you, and even better, you are enjoying yourself. And if it’s not in college that you don’t find a heading in life, then you better find one soon thereafter, for the world is a confusing place, especially now, when the future is murky and the most unstable we have ever seen.

But Blair has prepared us well, for those who went through the entirety of it, making sure to get every Schmalenberg project started before the night before, ensuring that every Conforti journal was done sometime before the end of the school year, and completing every Buck lab report without tearing it to shreds. Those students, as opposed to the ones not here today, those students who have made the right and good decisions, have learned how the world can repay you if you keep a sense of consciousness. For it is without constant consciousness, one falls into the delights of hypocrisy and laziness. For the moment when you slack and choose to wait for the last moment to write that Roman paper, the moment when you say that a little ill will never hurt everyone, the world will strike back at you, as the economy struck back at the foolish trying to make an easy buck.

If Blair has taught me anything over the last four years, it is that it is not easy to become a Buccaneer. It requires a hell of a lot of work. But I know that with the title of a member of the Blair Class of ’09, we will succeed in college and in the world beyond. I also know that a good portion of this speech will go in one ear and out the other much like CHAT did freshman year, but I hope that this short, grammatically incorrect quote by Albert Einstein will help you remain conscious in the years ahead: “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” Thank you.

Posted 5/27/09

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