Superintendent Shelly, Board of Education, Principal Chappell, WHS Staff, Parents, Community of Wayne County and last but not least, Wayne High Graduates of 2022:
Before I begin I want to thank the WHS staff for putting up with us and keeping us in line for the last four years. Thank you for believing in us and helping us grow from little freshmen to the graduates we are today. You have opened the doors of education for us and nourished us with knowledge every day, so that we can continue on to reach our dreams. Parents, thank you for all your time and energy you have put in to help with the many activities, and for the endless amount of support you have provided us throughout the years. School board, staff, and parents, thank you for all you have done, so that we could receive our diplomas today.
Words cannot express how humbly honored I am to be here speaking today as the class of 2022’s Valedictorian. It fills me with great excitement to finally be here after working so hard for the last four years to achieve this goal of mine, which I didn’t think I was capable of accomplishing. Although, this title may not hold near as much value as to what lessons were learned along the way to achieve this. I have learned to a great extent about what it takes to have long-term success reaching goals throughout life. We are always taught that in order to be successful we must work hard, be determined, have passion, and grit which is no doubt true, but I found sacrifice to be a key player that no one really talks about.
Sacrifice plays a large role in the everyday choices we make. Every day we wake up and right off the bat, we choose to sacrifice sleep to have more time in our day. Throughout my time in high school I always found myself making decisions that would get me closer to my goal. It would be often difficult because of the desires to be young and not care, which prove to only be “short-term comforts.” This means this mindset would only provide happiness for a short period of time. I made the hard decisions to de-prioritize these comforts for the “not so fun things,” like staying home to work on my schooling because I knew this would bring me to my long-term goals. I truly found the saying, “You lose some to gain some,” to be true. A lesson learned is that you must give your best efforts now in order to have the greatest awards later on. Once learning sacrifice is a necessary part of life to find success in goals, then you will find that delayed gratification is real and proves to be worth the sacrifices made for your “long-term successes.”
Finally I cannot conclude without saying congrats to the class of ’22. We made it and all of our hard work has paid off. I don’t know about anyone else, but I definitely started a countdown to graduation before the first day of school, and now the day has finally come to where my countdown has hit zero. This has been the long-awaited moment that proves to be so exhilarating and bittersweet. We all began this chapter of life, high school, just four years ago, and it closes today in what now feels like a blink of an eye. With the end of a chapter a new one will begin. The new chapter is blank which makes it open to us with endless possibilities to fill it with. We have a new start as we enter our adulthood to construct a successful life for ourselves. This is a point in time where it really matters to choose more important things that will lead you to achieving your goals. Remember great successes come with great sacrifices.
We have the world in our hands and let’s be real—we’ve already made it through ACT testing, the pandemic, online school, and the biggest of all, for me at least, is that we passed choir with senioritis, so I truly believe we are all capable of anything we truly desire. Now after this next hour when we flip our tassels I hope to inspire all of you to continue to be a badger and take on this new chapter of life living fearlessly and fiercely.
– by Tamara Ayala, Valedictorian, Wayne High School
Feature image caption: Wayne Badger Ethan White clears the high jump.
An address delivered at the Wayne High School graduation commencement, May 26, 2022.
Read the WHS Salutatorian speech here.
Read Wayne’s 2024 valedictorian speech in Go Get Your Plate by Lacey Ellett.