Our needs and wants for ourselves vary as we experience different things and that is the same with our plans for after school. Perhaps it’s easier to dream when you’re younger, but as we get older dreams change. There is also competition between parents for their children to be the best! However, what is honestly better than your child being truly happy? Come September, does it actually matter if we are working, attending college, completing a PLC or travelling the world? With the pressure stowed upon our generation from the unrealistic views of perfection on social media, constant comparisons of grades in school, or just trying to keep up with everyone else around us, sometimes the last thing on our mind is ourselves, our own happiness! This shouldn’t be the case. Sometimes a sense of under-achievement is formed when such things aren’t completed. After years of all the advice we’ve taken from you, I have some advice you should take from us! There is a lot of expectation for us students to do well in school or life, to get good points in our leaving cert and to push on another 4 or so years and claim a university degree. But most importantly the ones who always showered us with love not because they had to but because they wanted to and meant it. Where would we be without our parents? The ones who scream only because they have to (as they say), the ones who ensured we would never be late by waking us up 2 hours before we planned to, the ones who taught us what was right or wrong, how to ride a bike or to tie our shoelaces. We would never have reached our potential to this date without an enormous support system behind us all, from school staff to friends but most importantly our parents. I assure you we will carry a piece of each other into every single thing we do next, to remind us of who we are and how we got here. As we look around the room, to all the people who helped us to become who we are today and to all the people we feel as though we are saying goodbye to. We must be greater than what we suffer, whether it be work, relationships, life or loss, we must keep our hope and resilience afloat. Keep our light strong and keep our light alive. But no matter how burdened you are or lost you feel, we must promise to ourselves that we will hold on to hope. So don’t waste the precious time you’ve been given living someone else’s life, make yoursĬount! Fight for what you believe in, no matter what! Even if you fall short, what better way could you have fulfilled your time here on this earth? It’s easy to feel hopeful on a day like today, but unfortunately there will be dark days ahead of us too, days when you feel alone or days when you’re pleading for hope. In some way we may feel or think that we are immortal, but we’re young, we’re supposed to feel that way, we’re graduating! The future is, will be and should be bright, but, like our brief six years at Loreto Crumlin, what makes life valuable is that it doesn’t last forever. I suppose there is truth in the saying that ‘’time flies when you’re having fun.’ I’m sure everyone behind me remembers walking through the enormous steel gates on the first day of first year in 2013? Haversacks on our backs, palms all sweaty, praying that you wouldn’t bump into a 6th year because for 1st years, 6th years seem scarier than Ms Nolan when you forget your Irish homework!! Back then, I never would have believed my six years at school would go by so quickly, underneath all the hatred for getting up at 7:30 each morning, moaning about sitting in 8/9 40 minute classes a day or forgetting my lunch maybe once a week I never truly saw the time going by. But graduation is a time of unity, for each and everyone of us to come together and give ourselves the pat on the back we deserve, whilst also cherishing the good memories and lessons we have been part of and enjoyed over the last six years. Yet for others, the past 6 years in school may not have been so easy, many of us have concealed our problems behind the green uniform as we walked through the doors of school every morning. Some of us may have glided through 6th year with very few road bumps here and there. The theme of graduation today, which was picked by us as a year group is ‘Behind you all your memories, before you all your dreams, Around you all who love you, Within you all you need.’ I suppose this will have a different meaning and effect on each of us graduating today. On behalf of myself and my classmates I would like to welcome and thank you all for coming to celebrate with us, the Graduating Class of 2019. Good afternoon everyone, my name is Ciara White and I’m head girl here at Loreto College Crumlin.
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