In his June Senior Alumni Inauguration Dinner speech, reprinted below, Garret Wymore '09 reflected with his classmates on his years at Chadwick, and on replacing childhood's endless possibility with the goals and expectations of adulthood. -------------------------- Between the ages of 2 and 3, I watched the movie “The Land Before Time” approximately 174 times. After my meticulous research, I had decided that I wanted to be a brachiosaurus when I grew up. Also in consideration were velociraptor and bulldozer, which wasn’t a dinosaur, but was almost as cool. Despite the false hope of Jurassic Park, a really big asteroid and 66 million years of extinction threw a little wrench into my plans. But I was young and my mind was wide open; a small setback could easily be overcome.
Between my fourth and fifth years of life, I had settled on becoming a peanut butter and jelly sandwich taste-tester before I finally matured and made my first significant career investment, a metal detector, in order to hunt for treasure. After about two years of exploration and about $11.34 in loose change to show for it, I struck it rich and won the Chips Ahoy! $1000 contest when I picked the box of chocolate chip cookies that had no chocolate chips. However, my retirement fund was quickly diminished when my father invested the thousand in NASDAQ stocks right before the tech bubble burst.
So by the age of 10, I had won and lost a fortune, dabbled and failed in numerous occupations, but still remained optimistic about my future. Every day, my knowledge of the world grew larger and with it came an ever-expanding idea of possibility. The possibility that I could be anything and everything. Being “realistic” was not an issue when I had such an open interpretation of reality. As far as children go, my imagination was limited. I am sure that sitting in this room we had wanna-be presidents, astronauts, Pokemon trainers, captain planets, and probably even a handful of future Frankie Munezes.
We all entered a high school that sought to keep this idea of imagination and possibility alive. It became easy to believe that the world only consisted of green lawns that could simply be fenced off and re-seeded every time they died. But eventually there came a time that we would leave the gates of Chadwick.
As our tenure here comes to a close, so too does this honeymoon with possibility. The chorus of voices asking about your major, your plans, your future will only grow louder as will the expectations for you to know the answers. But we cannot become obsessed with these answers. Chadwick selected and shaped a group of students that were different in many ways, but all possessed a relentless drive to successfully complete whatever task or challenge that faced us. With our minds so thoroughly set on this goal, whether it was publishing the newspaper, winning an athletic contest, making it though another day of hiking on Outdoor Ed, or imagining the most absurd chants to yell at volleyball games, there was very little that could be done to stop us. As we struggled to read just one more page of Great Expectations, to withstand another inevitable loss in Homecoming Tug-o-War, or to labor over the thirteenth college application supplement, we kept ourselves motivated by striving to reach the high school form of Enlightenment: graduation.
However, by constantly reminding ourselves of our goals, we did not completely focus on the process. We have been trained to attach a special value to outcomes and endings. The moment we complete something, be it high school, a Triple Kingburger from Fatburger, or even this speech, we feel a certain sense of simplicity and finality that our goal-oriented minds crave. While outcomes are important, they cannot be the only part we value. I have watched the clock in many football games, anxiously waiting for the clock to wind to zero and seal the victory. Instead of enjoying the game that I love to play, I wasted time trying to make time disappear in order to reach my goal.
We will all have our own accomplishments and feel the satisfaction of succeeding. Likewise, we will all fall short at something and feel the awful pangs of disappointment. However, we cannot dwell only upon these outcomes or let them define us. As we begin to pack our bags and disperse across the country, it is important to remember that many of the decisions that got us here have not been our decisions at all. We have learned what it feels like to be selected, and in many cases, what it feels likes to be selected against. Some see these “selections” and outcomes as the enemies of possibility: the closing of doors. Rather, our new separate paths create risks and opportunities for us to create our own possibilities.
Leaving all that we know behind will not be easy or comfortable, especially considering that what we leave behind will not be the same when we return. As much as we try to carve a lasting and unique memory of ourselves, there will always be more people to fill the gaps we leave vacant. Next year, new voices will yell “tick, tick, BOOM,” different cars will park in the spaces we will always consider “ours,” a new batch of eighth-grade girls will be welcomed to high school at the Amphantasy, and the only evidence of us will be the black and white portraits that line the walls of Roesseler.
Fortunately, what we take from this school will last far longer than what we leave behind. Some of the people that surround you may be the closest friends that you will ever meet. Many are simply acquaintances, some of which you will never see again. Soon the Class of 2009 will become the Class of 2013. But when this week is over, all of us will be Chadwick Alumni. This means a lot more than getting discounts at the Red Onion. No matter how far you go from Palos Verdes or how little you see your old friends, our time at this school and our experiences with each other can never be erased from who we are. Whether we have been together for four years or 13, it will be an honor to share the graduation stage with you all on Saturday and I wish you all good luck with all the opportunities and possibilities that lie ahead. Thank you.
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In his June Senior Alumni Inauguration Dinner speech, reprinted below,