GREENFIELD — Greenfield High School Class of 2019 took the field at the Bruins stadium for the final time Friday morning for its commencement ceremony, during which 250 seniors tossed their caps in the air in celebration of their graduation.
Family, friends, teachers and classmates watched and cheered from the stands as the seniors celebrated their last day of high school. Speeches were given by seniors Ruby Lara, ASB president; Annel Compean, class president; Steffi Marie Liao Cadiz, salutatorian; and Adriana Galindo Diaz, valedictorian.
“After 13 years of waking up early and going to school, we have successfully made it to the end,” Diaz said. “Now we are at the beginning of the rest of our lives.”
Diaz told her fellow graduates that they should be proud of their accomplishments over the years.
“All our work has definitely not been easy, and I don’t know what each of you had to go through to be here, but I’m very proud of you all,” she said. “Our accomplishments are not accomplished alone. We all had teachers, friends and parents by our side who motivated us to continue.”
The May 31 program also featured the National Anthem, sung by Cadiz, and the recognition of California Scholarship Federation (CSF) Life Members. There were 36 students recognized this year for earning CSF Life Membership, the most in the school’s history.
The commencement address was given by Greenfield High School Principal Frank Lynch.
“It has been my pleasure to work with all of you, to have given you food for thought, to challenge your thinking or to have you challenge mine, to cheer you on and to be at your side when you needed a good cry,” Lynch said. “Today, I want to encourage you to go forward from the limits of Greenfield. … There’s a great big world out there just waiting for you to change it, if you want to.”
Lynch then offered some words of advice to the graduates.
“Always remember to choose for yourself, if you want to be a potato, an egg or coffee grounds. Life is going to throw lots of challenges your way. If you look at challenges like hot water, when you place a potato in hot water, it gets soft and can be smashed; when you place an egg in hot water, it becomes hard and unyielding; but when you place coffee grounds in hot water, they make coffee — the nectar of the gods,” he said. “In other words, face challenges, but don’t let them crush you, don’t let them make you hard and unfeeling. Instead, be like coffee grounds and take life’s challenges and make something better than what you had before.”
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View more photos in the South County Graduation Section in the June 12 issue.
