Valedictum

 I wrote this in senior year for English class--we all did; I wasn't actually my school's valedictorian. But I think I would have given a damn good speech. Frankly, I think I hit the zeitgeist: all that's missing is the "yes we can". Enjoy.

The valedictory address comes, when it finally comes, as a small anachronism each year, written and approved as a rumination on the approaching end of days and delivered some weeks into the new reality. It's a last grab at ceremonial closure, an opportunity for ritualized mass reminiscence, and finally a way to try to see ourselves in some kind of context with respect to each other and our world as we launch and are launched, terrifyingly and bellyfirst, into the unknown.

The word valedictorian comes from the Latin for “to say farewell,” and that's what the valedictorian is really meant to do: to act as an official mouthpiece for the spirit of all our goodbyes. But to say goodbye to someone you have to know them, and I'm sorry to say I don't know even a third of the people in this room by name. I'm sure many of you are great people. I know you've had a wide set of experiences here at Northern, and I can't hope to recount or even imagine them all. We've been in different clubs, you and I and the person on your left, taken different classes, been concerned about different issues, and I know if you were standing up here instead of me we'd be listening to a very different speech. We're different people, all of us. The only thing we have in common is a time and a place.

But the importance of that commonality, when viewed with the correct perspective, cannot be overstated. Look around: this is our cohort, our competition, and our generation. David Foot called us the Echo; Dan Tapscott called us Generation Y and sometimes N-Gen—we have yet to decide what we'll call ourselves. Whatever you call it, our generation is the most exciting one in decades, and it's important that we know that. Coming of age in a new millenium, amidst blogging and Wikipedia, alongside the rise and fall and resurrection of Globalization, and finally tired of the pessimism, disaffectedness and cynicism that plagued the twentieth century, we stand to have the newest ideas and effect the most positive change this planet has seen since the 1700s. Leave it to our parents to gripe about how the world's going to Hell—we're about to inherit a very stuffy old world, folks, and it's up to us to blow it open. Information is freer and the world is smaller than it's ever been, and the bravest of us have already started to make waves—think about Marc and Craig Kielburger and their Free the Children efforts, or Benjamin Quinto, founder of the Global Youth Action Network. Or stay closer to home, and look at the people in this very room who bring causes into the school and get things done.

The real question, as always, is Who are we? What does it mean to be us? Where are we going? And the answer is: we're going wherever we want to go. Between us we'll write novels and laws, invent new ways to work and think, and find the cure for apathy and disillusionment. Maybe it sounds lame—but I believe we can change the world. And not only that, but we have to. It's our duty and our birthright. All we have to do is not be too jaded to imagine something better, and to have the guts to go for it.

--ICGYABL, 2007