An energetic and outgoing series of Mt. Blue High School senior class leaders congratulated their fellow graduates Saturday with speeches, slam poetry and songs.

The gymnasium at the Mt. Blue campus overflowed at the Saturday morning ceremony, with the graduates’ relatives, friends and fellow community members standing in the halls or watching a closed-circuit projection of the ceremony from the next door auditorium.

“As our 165 graduates cross the stage, there will be 165 different stories,” Principal Monique Poulin said.

Senior Hailey Mealey told students that in their lives after high school, they should seek three things: infinity, beauty and bliss.

She said they should seek to be infinite by defying limits that could otherwise hold them back, which could mean anything from trying new foods to not being afraid to “talk to weird people.”

Graduates should find beauty in everything said Mealey, and she urged them not to define narrowly where they look for beauty.

“I’m talking about finding beauty in everything,” she said.

She said, however, that life won’t always be full of beautiful things. There will be challenges and problems that should not be ignored.

“However, we can always learn to look at them, accept them, fix them and find beauty,” she said.

She said the final quality, bliss, “is both beautiful and infinite.”

“I find it in art,” she said.

Along with the class speakers, graduates followed Mt. Blue tradition by giving several musical performances at the graduation. Tissues were passed around among graduates while senior Astra Pierson sang “Landslide,” by Fleetwood Mac. Graduates sang and clapped along while Mt. Blue Voices sang “I Feel Good,” by James Brown, and again while the Mt. Blue High School jazz combo performed “Anna Sun,” by Walk the Moon.

Class speaker Noah LePage told his peers that they should be impressed with what they accomplished despite the chaos of the renovation and classroom shuffling happening on campus for much of their high school career.

“We were even able to win the state championship without a trophy case to put the ball in,” he said, in reference to the accomplishment of their football team the previous year.

While filling out his application for student housing at New York University, LePage said it finally hit him that the students were venturing out into a “new world” he said. However, he said, the best candidates for entering a new world were “those who were awesome in the old world” like his classmates.

Valedictorian Hanna Deon and Salutatorian Anya Nordstrom addressed the audience together, in a slam poem recalling their accomplishments over the past four years.

They recalled being encouraged to be themselves, and dress like themselves. The remembered acceptance as the norm of the high school culture. They thanked the school for never asking either of them to “tone myself down,” and instead encouraging them to stand out and shine.

In the last lines of the performance, and before a standing ovation from the audience, Nordstrom said they have been asked before how they became brave enough to be so outgoing.

“You have never given me a reason not to be,” they said together to the cheers of the gymnasium.

Kaitlin Schroeder — 861-9252

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