Download - Graduation Speech 2012 Final
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Farewell speech 2012
Dear IB graduates,
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. Quote Aristotle.
Sitting here today you may agree on this statement.
You may also know the following situation too well or a similar one:
Student 1: I hate IB. Its killing me! I swear to god, I am going to talk to our coordinator tomorrow and drop out!
Fellow IB student: No, you wont. Student 1: Youre right, I wont. I am pretty sure that to most of you the IB task has turned out
more difficult than you had anticipated. Many have given up on
your way, realising that they couldnt satisfy the requirements of the education. BUT you didnt give up. You pulled your socks up and pulled through some of you managed better than others, some met all the deadlines without grumbling, others didnt, some had low absence, others didnt, some had no reason to come to my office, others had their reasons. Or in other words: I got to know
some of you better than others.
You have all had your ups and downs and you have all suffered
under a heavy workload. Youve hardly had a week without a deadline and every day youve had a lot of homework. Going through IB is indeed a tough journey no doubt about that. And at the end of this demanding educational journey you have
passed through a three-week final security check. You have come
to your subject exams carrying nothing but see-through bottles with drinking water and clear plastic bags for your pens and
pencils. You have listened patiently to the instructions to candidates starting with Do not open the examination paper
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until I instruct you to do so, and you have been sitting deeply concentrated while emptying your brains onto ruled IB paper.
These exams have been a tour de force for all of you, exacting and
exhausting.
Receiving your cap on this special occasion is the culmination of
your effort. You have gone into the mission completed-mode for a
while, and now you need a break from thick and heavy textbooks,
timetables, deadlines, absence registrations etc.
Whatever you do next, travel, work or start studying, there is no
doubt that IB makes a solid basis for your future lives. Although
you might have the feeling right now that you have forgotten
everything you learned, I am sure that much of what you have
read and learned has become established in corners of your mind,
and I know that you leave us with a toolkit of factual knowledge
and academic skills in each of your subjects.
Furthermore I would like to emphasize the three elements which
are mandatory at IB: Theory of knowledge, Extended Essay and
CAS
TOK has developed your critical thinking skills and you have
learned that very little is completely black or white, good or bad,
true or false.
Writing your EEs has acquainted you with the independent
research and writing skills expected at universities.
And finally CAS has forced you to deal with life outside school.
Besides that, I am pretty sure that IB has contributed to your
personal education you have developed a strong belief in your capabilities and talents, and some have discovered that they had
talents they didnt know of before.
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Now you may think: yeah yeah, these are just empty words, but
they are not. Thats what I hear from former IB students. Ill give you a few examples:
Hester Callaghan graduated 2008 gave a speech at the schools anniversary last September and she concluded: My time at GG was
memorable and taught me a lot about myself and what I would
like to get out of life. It was an inspiring place to be and I can only
hope that more people in the future decide to take the IB in this
tiny, picturesque coastal town in Djursland and they will have just
as wonderful an experience as I had.
Basha Sykorova graduated 2011 wrote to all her teachers: Greetings from London. The city is niceIt is just the university that is not so good. At least it made me realize how awesome IB
was. Thank you for that.
As you sit here today, you are but 26 out of more than 50,000 IB
Diploma graduates this year. These 50,000 graduates sit in 142
countries, around the world, waiting for their results to be
published on the 6th of July.
Therefore, you wear your caps, not only with well-deserved pride,
but also with a certain anxiety, as you are still on your way to the
real graduation day.
Whatever your results turn out to be, you have earned the right to
spend the next couple of weeks celebrating your achievement of
completing the IB Diploma Programme - and you have deserved
the admiration of your parents, families and friends.
Enjoy it while you can, because reality will creep up on you, and
you will embark on new tasks which will again demand endless
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exercise, training, patience and the ability to overcome obstacles
before you can deliver your next educational results.
Let me congratulate you all on graduating today and wish you
every success and happiness in your future lives.