Jake Zrihen, 22岁 received the Joseph Dana Allen Award for highest scholarship, combined with commensurate character. As part of this honor, Jake presented the following speech a1 .保利第165届毕业典礼 2022年6月3日.

Jake arrived at Poly in sixth grade and excelled in Poly’s classrooms during his tenure here. He opened his speech reflecting on the sense of unity his class used to “compel change” and improve not only themselves as individuals, but also the community and school experience as a whole. He spoke about the passion for fighting for one’s beliefs and making sure student voices were heard. Jake shared his hope that students continue to carry this drive to make the world a more just place wherever life takes them. 今年秋天他将前往达特茅斯.

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大家早上好, 家人和朋友, 校友, 当然, 2022年即将毕业的保利预科班. I stand before you today humbled and excited by the opportunity to share a few words about our time at 保利预科 and the future that lies ahead.

I’ve been told that it’s a good idea to start a commencement speech with a self-deprecating joke. So I thought long and hard about what that might be for me. But then I realized—I’m not that great at jokes… and as my classmates can surely attest, I’m not that great at self-deprecation either.

不管怎样，博彩网站排名我的事说得够多了. I want to take this opportunity to talk about our class as a whole and what we’ve accomplished throughout the last four years.

当我回顾我们在保利预科学校的时光, I am struck by the number of instances we came together as a class, united to compel change to try and improve our experience, 无论是作为个人还是作为一个社区.

Our high school careers began with a walk out and subsequent sit-in, protesting a response to a blackface video that we found was wholly inadequate. 在接下来的两年里, 我们提出了对COVID协议的担忧, growing frustrated with the cold in the tents, pushing back on constant mask-wearing and social distancing from our friends, not to mention spitting in those vials once a week. We fought vigorously when we felt coaches were unjustly dismissed and stood up for our fellow classmates. 这样做的时候, we saw the power of unity and the importance of getting involved and having our voices heard.

澄清一下, this discussion of all our resistance to Poly is not intended to criticize our school or the administration. 事实上，我的意思正好相反. To me, it is a testament to the relationship we’ve established with Poly.

That relationship is more commonplace than you might think. When family members make mistakes, we tell them. When our close friends do something wrong, we don’t let it go. The same is certainly true of our relationships with our classmates. All of you let me hear it when I singlehandedly contact-traced a large chunk of the grade last year. We never let Devan or Bradley forget their driving incidents either.

This whole idea of resistance to authority can be considered a teenage phase, 但我也相信这是美国人的理想. I know that that probably sounds funny coming from me, considering the fact that I’m Canadian and I never let anyone forget it, 但我在AP大学待得够久了.S. History and Gov to know that our country is predicated on the idea of disagreeing with the one in charge. That idea has been emphasized even further in the past century or so, 是否在妇女选举权范围内, 公民权利, 或者其他伟大的社会运动.

这些天, with talk of what it means to be patriotic dominating the social sphere, it seems that that sort of resistance is less celebrated. But I think we can all agree that loyalty doesn’t mean blindly following things that we disagree with. 如果一个人真的爱国, if somebody truly loves their country—or school—they fight for the causes that make it the best it can be.

这就是我们在保利所做的. We’ve never stood by and let things happen when we disagreed. We fought for Poly to handle its problems better, 变得更好, to be the best school it possibly could be. 我们一直在努力纠正它.

那么肯定, 所有的不服从, 所有的抱怨, all that criticism over the past four years could be misconstrued as anger or disenchantment. But in my view, there is no better example of how much we love and appreciate our school. 保利的接受度, 事实上, its encouragement of that discourse is testament to how much its administration and faculty care about us and our path forward. I encourage us all to remember that as we move on.

But I also encourage us to keep up that mindset. No matter where the next steps of our lives take us, we need to bring with us our unwavering inability to settle when things aren’t right. 我们都同意这一点, 我们国家有很多, 事实上, 我们的世界是不对的. 而且，正如我们从Mr. Winston’s workshops throughout the year, we’re not bystanders; we’re upstanders.

So I’d like to leave you with the following quote from former U.S. 参议员卡尔·舒尔茨, 对我来说, 恰如其分地体现了我们的保利预科精神, and what I hope we take with us for the rest of our lives: “Our country, 对还是错. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right.谢谢你.