Commencement Address
Jun 7th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | Start the Discussion |
Today should be one of the more interesting in recent memory. Not only is Hillary Clinton officially ending her campaign today, but I’m delivering the commencement address at my first alma mater.
High schools count as alma maters, right?
Mt. Sophia Academy is the homeschool diploma program/private school my mother, Vicki Tillman, and Marilyn Groop started back in the day.
Wait a second . . . . There’s a website! That’s too cute/cool: http://www.mountsophiaacademy.com/
Anyway, homeschoolers tend to face a lot of challenges when it comes to making local school boards happy, finding places to take the SATs, getting AP classes and officially-recognized diplomas, etc. So my mother and Mrs. Groop decided to create a legal organization (as many others have done across the nation) for homeschoolers (in the DE/MD/PA tri-state area) to take care of all the official and legal stuff.
Because of them, and the other homeschooling parents who work with them, I and many, many others got to graduate high school with legitimate diplomas.
And Mt. Sophia has gotten cooler and cooler since I graduated. I was in the first graduating class, and we didn’t “do” much back then. We didn’t have valedictorians and salutatorians back in my day.
But now there’s a committee who evaluates grades and essays and activities of the students (anonymously; that is, they don’t know whom they’re evaluating) to decide who’s valedictorian and salutatorian. And they have various dances and proms and stuff.
Kids these days . . . . *shakes head*
Anyway, since the commencement speaker this year had to cancel, and I’m the son of the Academic Adviser, I got called in. And since this is the 10-year anniversary of my high school graduation, it seems kind of appropriate.
I’ve worked hard on my commencement address. It’s an exposition of the sentence:
Being an excellent person means practicing presentation and perspective-taking.
*grin*
I find it amusing because my mother hates speeches/sermons about “The Four P’s of Prosperous Living,” or “The Three S’s of Sanctimonious . . .” um. . ., or “The Fifteen C’s of Christian Charity.”
But I think she’ll like mine.
And I think I’ll post the full text here, since I worked so hard on it.
