'Element'ary Education for Mount Everett Grads
 Salutatorian Samantha Swartz and valedictorian Gabriella Makuc look over the Mount Everett graduation program before speaking to the class of 2012. |
The Mount Everett Regional School valedictorian already had an honor speech built around the theme of water. Needless to say, the drenching rain pouring down outside the Serge Koussevitzky Music Shed at Tanglewood was music to her ears.
"I'm glad the rain decided to join us," Makuc said.
It certainly made a fitting backdrop for her remarks, which used water as a metaphor for the universality of the human experience.
"It flows through rivers, down mountainsides, evaporates, joins the world in another hemisphere, gets tossed around in the Great Lakes, but remains the same," the Lawrence University-bound Makuc said. "We return to the water when we're true to our pure selves. We are all made of the same stuff — perhaps the stuff of which stars are made, or perhaps this simple element that's common to all humanity.
"Sometimes it's easy to see life for the moments and the passing images. It's easy to get caught up in our appearance and our status and forget that who we are inside is, like water, always changing form and expression while remaining that same pure soul."
Sixty-seven other graduates of the Southern Berkshire Regional School District high school joined Makuc on Tanglewood's main stage.
Earlier in the week, Makuc explained that she wanted to encourage her classmates not to buy into a cultural tendency to live only for the moment.
"I want to motivate people to not only work hard but to enjoy the work they're doing and enjoy life," she said in a telephone interview. "The culture is full of a lot of instant gratification. But I think a good path for everyone in society to at least try is to enjoy the process — to not be afraid of long-term commitment and long-term sacrifice.
"In the world we're in today, we're connected to everyone around the world but sometimes not connected in the right ways, and we've lost some of the human connection we can find in great literature, music and art."
Makuc is well acquainted with great music. She plays first trumpet in the school band and has played piano since she was 5. She plans to study music and literary studies in Appleton, Wis., and one of her possible career aspirations is to be a choir director, she said.
On Saturday morning, she encouraged her fellow graduates to stay true to their goals and open to life's possibilities.
"We must understand that the world, like a river, is in a constant state of creativity and flux," Makuc said. "We must understand others this way, not judging, but encouraging, not limiting, but giving second chances. Water has no limits. We are made of the most giving and transformative substance on the planet. Its purpose is to connect. It connects civilization to civilization, community to community — it connects us all to our Earth."
Connection was a theme for each of the principal speakers at graduation exercises.
 The small high school graduated 67 seniors on Saturday. |
"Regardless of what you do after today, regardless of where you go or who you become — strive to be a role model, to be a mentor," Swartz said in her welcoming remarks. "Both now and in the years to come, pay forward what you have been given by the members of this audience and others who have encouraged and inspired you."
Mount Everett Principal Glenn R. Devoti lauded the class of 2012 for its sense of obligation and its success "paying forward."
"A small school our size has no business having a band like the one we hear today," Devoti said. "We have no business having clubs like FFA, Interact and SADD that do so much. We have no business having two teams competing for Western Mass championships this week.
"The reason why we do is all of you understand the obligation that goes along with being part of a community that is connected. Without that sense of obligation, none of these things would happen."
On Saturday, Makuc reminded her audience that the Sheffield high school encourages students to connect with one another by promoting "cross-curricular projects."
She is looking forward to continuing that style of learning in college.
"Lawrence seemed like the absolutely perfect place for me," she said last week. "It's so small, and they made it clear from the start the college and conservatory are really collaborative. If you want to do a project with history and music, the professors will work with you to make the connections.
"I feel more of a connection between music and the college than at any other school I've been to."
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