Scotch Plains-Fanwood High Graduates Class of 2013

Here, photos from Thursday night's ceremonies. Congrats, graduates!

Class of 2013 Valedictorian Andrew Citera gave the following speech:

I stand here today in front of family, friends, teachers, school administrators, and my fellow peers, the Class of 2013, with a distinct and vivid feeling – apprehension.  Now you may be asking yourself – why does a smart, young, and confident guy feel apprehensive? After all, I’m the kind of person who sets a goal and pursues it relentlessly, albeit I may get sloppy along the way, I always push forward. Well, the truth is, I feel apprehensive because I struggled to figure out what to say in this speech.

Don’t get me wrong – I am truly honored to gaze into the eyes of my beautiful classmates, especially you Svet, and exude words of wisdom and nostalgic tidings – but it is a daunting task. What do you possibly say to a group of soon to be college freshmen, including myself, who believe they know how the world works? I mean if you’ve ever tried to have an intellectual debate with Dylan Sands you’d know the feeling.

Regardless, here I am, here we are, and unlike my first day of kindergarten I can’t simply put my head into my arms and pretend nobody exists. So I sat in front of my blank computer screen, I went to the gym; I went for runs, all while racking my brain for inspiration…

And then it hit me, like actually hit me – cicadas. Cicadas as in the annoying insects with bulging red eyes which we can probably hear humming in the background at this moment, the very creatures that make walking home from school an exercise in dodging, dipping, diving, ducking, and dodging. Aside from their sometimes cumbersome nature one cannot help to marvel at the workings of Mother Nature. Just think, 17 years ago, a time when Bill Clinton was President, cell phones didn’t have cameras let alone access to the internet, and Facebook was a non-existent website – billions of cicada nymphs made their way underground. There, below our feet for 17 years, these tiny nymphs fed on the fluid from tree roots only to make their way to the surface as a result of instinctual triggers. Hundreds of years, multiple generations – all evolutionarily synchronized to an eternal clock continuing to survive and carry on.

Despite the obvious genetic and morphologic differences we can all draw similarities to the cicada life cycle. Many of us were indeed born 17 to 18 years ago and although we all didn’t simultaneously burrow underground we came to grow up in the Scotch Plains-Fanwood community. Some may argue, based on the lack of things to do in town, it feels like we live beneath the surface, but the more appropriate comparison is simply that our underground is the smaller world we reside in before taking the next big step in our lives.

Over this seemingly fast moving stretch of time we haven’t fed on the roots of trees; rather we have nourished ourselves with the moments and experiences shared with the very family, friends, and teachers we sit with here today. In elementary school, we learned the alphabet, how to count to ten, and the golden rule. In middle school, we discovered how to operate the strange contraption called a locker and attempted to gain something from the painfully fruitless advisory periods. And then there was high school…

Yes, good oooooold Spiffy High. What may have seemed like a foreign world four years ago as tiny freshmen has now grown into a place many of us would call a second home (minus the fact that I still avoid the bathrooms for obvious reasons). As much as we may have said we could not wait for this day to come, leaving behind this school will be no easy task, just as moving from a home is also difficult. Leaving behind this school means leaving behind the pep rallies in the first week and the happy feeling you get deep down when you see Miss Stern for the first time of the new school year. It means leaving behind the sea of blue (or black or white) at the soccer games, Mike Rempter’s hoarse delivery of the chant “Give me an ‘R’” (not to mention his thousands of Facebook updates) and Raider Nation which has certainly grown over our four years here. It means leaving behind the stairs in the library and the cookies in the cafeteria; the bomb threats, the graffiti, the ceiling tiles and the fake hallway. It means leaving behind the band concerts, the choir concerts, the REP plays, and the hundreds of trophies our music department uses as doorstops. And yes, it means leaving behind Lazy River Rentals, the houses of Jake, Hailee and Steph and quality time with the L's and the P's.

But in the end, most importantly, it means leaving behind a place where we have spent four crucial years of our life, four years that have shaped us as an individuals. So as we emerge from our underground, the subset of a much larger world, we are not cicadas with procreation being our only mindset, instead, we are a class of young men and women primed to take on the future.

I promised myself and others not to lecture, but I cannot deny the opportunity to express a heartfelt aspiration – do not be apprehensive. Mimic the cicada’s fearless (and sometimes foolish) mindset – fly into things, meet new people, and embrace distinct experiences for today is not the end, but only the start.

Congratulations, Class of 2013, and best of luck in everyone’s future endeavors – I am confident that a class who survived both the end of the world and Hurricane Sandy will find success in some capacity throughout life. And with that, I would like to leave everyone here with my favorite quote spoken by US President Calvin Coolidge…

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

Thank you to my Mom and Dad; thank you to the boys; and thank you to the Class of 2013. It’s been real.