to rise plays we're going to have the playing of our national anthem which will be sung by michael angelo but paglia what and he will be accompanied by the peters taj of high school band i ask that you also future little understood the embrace was enough in those early days to sustain this emerging life which is a uniquely named to be the person today we know from early days of simple words through tottering moments of first walk to new friends and first days of school the world of family and friends has grown showing the promise that your life its dreams shaped by those who believed that your life makes all the difference in this world that a man a man this prayer no lands with all its hopes dreams and all  good morning and welcome to peter's township high schools commencement exercise for the class of one thousand nine hundred one this is indeed a great day for our seniors and also for the guests family and friends who have joined here today to celebrate in mass this graduating class is symbolic rite of passage into adulthood one group of guest are particularly pleased to recognize are those individuals representing the faculties of peter's township schools these individuals have come to share in this occasion and to wish their former students our graduates your children a fair while at this time with those faculty members seated before me please stand to be recognized for their efforts in support of youth of our community because they plan pass through the classrooms please rise faculty thank you thank you as adults and graduates we can all close our eyes and remember the emotional rush we had the day we graduated from high school and how this rush was accompanied by confusion  rment of our hearts and our minds is what's great rejoice that we remember it was this newfound energy that propelled us into our journey into our lives forcing us to sort out our emotions and to reconfigure rate the confusion and torment of our hearts and minds into opportunity and achievement so it is today that amidst this conscious and subconscious emotional  that we smile realizing that from this experience comes the seeds of adulthood a new branch on your family tree and another chapter in or in the history of us all i say good luck to the graduate as i know your journey will twist and turn but i am cough that you will find the right path to life and seize the opportunities of a great deal of success at this time it's my pleasure to introduce to you i have to be honest i can't remember a single trick identity i couldn't tell you much at all about our twenty fifth president william mckinley and i'd be hard pressed to explain just exactly how an electric generator works but i pencil to fill in more circles and i've never wanted to see in my entire life i also have my freshman schedule with me it reminds me of the confusion of my first few days of high school luckily the seniors who were there to help  in the direction of the cafeteria when i wanted to go to gym handbooks in here to signify a change in adjusting to change to change from middle school to high school and to the new administration the senior year of my car keys my freedom transportation my lifeline and of course you can't drive your car to school without your parking pass i'll never forget my seven for you want to run school when the late bill rings at seven forty two  dumb joke book in my inbox some people are convinced that i've written every dumb joke book ever published anyway here let me give you an example a guy walked into a b absolutely no sense to him but dumb jokes are sometimes the only thing that helped me and my friends keep our sanity and they gave us a chance to laugh when we didn't think it was possible their pictures in my boxes well pictures of my family and friends they've always been there for me and i thank god for them these things may not be the most valuable or the most precious items from my life in fact many of them are probably lying around your own house somewhere but these are the things that were always remind our perhaps i should say hard me of my high school days who we are in much of what we have become developed somewhere between first grade reading and senior english most of us have been together for years others for seven and a few of us have had the privilege of having known each other since the first day of kindergarten high school in many ways can be considered the trial run of our life we made mistakes met friends and did some work we changed over the years and learned about who we are in the next couple of years to get the chance to start over from our mistakes and make new friends and now as we move on either to alone or with friends we will always have our memories with us the obvious well whatever we do or say we usually start at the beginning and stop when we reach the end looking back through the past twelve years we can single out many beginnings and then whether they are fad interests or relationships today it may seem as if we have come to an end to speeches the ceremony and the diplomas are all indicative of a final step today cannot be an end though no one here is finished each of our life stories have pages and pages of paper yet to be written on if we have not reached the end it must be that we have simply come to another beginning begin at the beginning for most of us this was an elementary school somewhere in peter's township fairly simple lives perfectly content with school recess and after school cartoons we learned how to be good how do walk in a single file line and how to say the pledge of allegiance completely dependent on the adults that surrounded us we did not yet know how to rationalize and reason for ourselves nor did we know how to question authority these were our first few steps through the looking glass of education middle school depressing question where were we going to go to school had it not been for neil armstrong we might have had classes four hundred feet down in a coal mine under the old middle school forced into a new school in a new township with kids from two other elementary schools and a different teacher and class for every room for every class six grade was bound to be a struggle and by the end of seventh grade after we had finally adapted to middle school life and neil armstrong we were shipped to andrew mellon in our evan and somehow during the transitions we managed to find a group of people to identify with for better or worse these groups became distinguished and the appropriate labels and appropriate labels were assigned to each during middle school we each began hearing the faint voice of a smoking caterpillar demanding to know who are you everyone began searching to find their own identity in the process of trying to figure out who we were with all of the braces and came experiments with makeup for the girls in three basic colors electric blue and i think for the guys  the best they could do is change the part in their hair if they are that lucky these three short years some up most of the uncertainty and insecurity we felt it was the best of times and others it was the worst good or bad those experiences laid the foundations for the people we were to become four years down the road much like alice was led from our garden we were taken from the security of middle school and led to a strange and foreign world high school  the caterpillar echoed in our minds as we reestablished ourselves with the rest of the people in the school we also began changing shapes and sizes not because of them while able drink me but the various hormones that were being released had much the same effect as we matured we made many adjustments physically we had to learn how to do things with longer legs and bigger feet mentally we had to re evaluate how we fit into our surroundings along with this growth came a development of personal values  standards although we may develop these things now they will be useful and used for the rest of our lives academically we have wandered into the classroom of a mad hatter some teacher who has made us each question our sanity and we have also probably stepped on the territory of the queen of hearts who threatened not to be off with our heads but threatened you with an automatic f as we three through the looking glass in the last twelve years we begin to realize that some of the craziness actually makes sense indeed some of the things we have done characters we have met and places we have visited especially over the past four years make almost as much sense as a tale about a girl falling down a rabbit hole but all of this madness is a part of growing up and preparing for what is to come where we go from here depends on what we have done and learned since the very first day of kindergarten most of us here to know today know that we want to get somewhere in life we want someone to point us in the right direction in conclusion i have some advice given to alice by the cheshire cat as she found herself in a very similar situation to shower post she began rather timidly would you tell me please which way out to go from here that depends a good deal on where you want to get to you replied the cat i don't much care where said alice and it doesn't matter which way you go said the cat so long as i get somewhere allan alice added as an explanation oh you are sure to do that replied the cat if only you walk long enough thank you  you often hear that history repeats itself it is interesting for me to see the parallels between the class of one nine hundred forty one and the class of one nine hundred ninety one we both embark upon a world of suffering and uncertainty caused by war a sagging economy and social unrest but we also emerged on the brink of positive political technological changes this enabled them and will enable us to overcome our obstacles it is my honor and privilege to introduce to you the class mr angelo beyond chris margaret o'neil gillespie and mrs katherine dames wagner is now my highest honor to present to mr gerald credo president of peters township school district board of directors to dr dennis or so the superintendent of schools for peters township the class of nine hundred ninety one his principal peter's touch of high school i certify that each member of the graduating class of nineteen ninety one have successfully completed and to field the requirements for graduation set forth by the commonwealth of pennsylvania and the board this opportunity to correct to congratulate all of the graduates and i would also like to encourage you to pursue the goals that you set for yourself in the future with the same enthusiasm that you showed in pursuing the goals that you have achieved in the past the enth success in the future but over the past several weeks you have heard a lot of people speak about change and clearly you have experienced a great deal of change during your years here at peter's tight ship we heard dr ever saw at the back to larry address thursday evening speak about a change in how it leads to excellence and there's a very popular book out now called the teach in the elephants to dance and the theme of that book is a discussion of various methods used to take change the culture or tradition or ways that corporations do things that are they've done things the same way for decades one chapter in the book deals with change in the uncertainty that it creates and in its final analysis it discusses how change also creates opportunities in change also creates leaders individuals become leaders during a period of change because they sense an opportunity and they take advantage of that opportunity i don't believe that there can be any doubt that over the next several months and sure that you never look back on a vent or an opportunity and wish that you had tried harder finally i sincerely hope that the goddess of what you may think at times that you all realize that you are very very important to everyone who is here this were thirty years ago and thirty miles north you may have been told commencement ceremonies by virtue of the fact that you are a high school diploma