Valedictorian Commencement Speech

Meaghan “Meg” Caron

The only detention I ever served was in high school for laughing too loudly, which was, let me just clarify, a result of doing math homework with a friend. But I couldn’t resist talking to my peers; it was the one thing I was incessantly reprimanded for in school, and the one lesson I could never learn from. Because why expel an opportunity to connect with the people around me? An opportunity to spread the joy I have so abundantly inside me. Well, I’m glad I never listened to the ones who tried to silence me. Imagine for a second that in your four years at UMaine you absorbed nothing but the words of your textbooks. For me, if I take away my professor’s dad jokes, the sarcasm my friends exude like CO2, the people who stopped me in the mall asking to show off my best dance move, or the bird call my classmate gave me from across the library, at 11 o’clock at night, to signal that the printer was indeed working…if I take these beautiful moments of self-expression away, well then, in fact, I start to lose focus. Focus on: what exactly is the point of this all? I look out before me at students who’ve spent years steering their life towards the acquisition of a job, a job that only exists because it’s needed to support the world around us, the people around us. And I cannot emphasize enough, that it truly is those people that underly the meaning of this life.

My freshman year I arrived at UMaine thinking I had to perfect myself before I could help the world. It was obvious to my teammates, coaches, friends and family that this was leading me down a dark path. I will never forget the words of those who reached out to me during that time. The stories, the music, and the books they all shared opened my eyes to realize that it didn’t matter what I did, or what I looked like, or even what my grades were, the only thing that mattered was that I was happy, and I now believe that is how we can each bring the most change to the world. I dropped expectations that had been placed on me. I spontaneously ran my first marathon, purely because it was fun. I traveled to France where I lived with children who made fun of the way I pronounced, sorry mis-pronounced, the letter “r”, and I laughed with them until my stomach hurt. I came home and I hosted extravagant dinner parties for my peers, watching from the side as their smiles illuminated the room brighter than any of my 14 lit candles. And in those moments, I remembered the incandescent grin on my own grandfather’s face, mon pépère en français, looking out at his family in the months before he died, appreciating everything that we were to him. And I myself realized that we are all blessed by an immeasurable amount of families. From the sports teams I’ve been a part of, the labs I’ve researched in, the teachers and classmates I’ve grown close to, and the roommates I’ve had in Maine, Michigan, France, Costa Rica, and Canada, I’ve formed familial relationships with a thousand souls, and they’ve each gifted me a part of themselves. The visions, the very dreams I possess, were not born from thin air, they are a culmination of values and passions conferred to me by those people.

I tell you this for various reasons. Reason #1 is to urge you to look inside yourself and discover what, or more specifically who, makes you the person you are today. Reason #2 is you’ve arrived at a moment in your life, if you have not already, where you must say goodbye, goodbye to the people that over the last several years you’ve gotten to know like family. If you’re anything like me, that is the hardest part. In French, there are two forms of the word goodbye: au revoir and adieu, the latter of which means forever. In my life, I’ve come to realize that you have the choice of which of these to use. For even if you never will see someone again, they exist in your heart if you allow them to. Your knowledge, skills, and very morals, are a marriage of teachings brought to you by every figure in your life. I hope that you will carry them with you into this next chapter and allow them to guide you to what brings you happiness. Lastly, let your own voice be heard. Share your stories, make connections, and be the change in someone else’s life that someone was for you. Merci.