Images from the 2024 Steiner Commencement

We are here today to celebrate the achievements, talents, and memories of the class of 2024. When I was thinking about what to talk about, a memory came to mind from tenth grade, from our fi rst main lesson with Ms. Bärtges. If you do not already know, for these main lessons you must memorize and recite a poem in front of the class. Thus, the memory of my classmate Andre reciting a poem by Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” inspired me to use the road as my analogy for my speech today.

Every road has a beginning, and my road that was taken started in the first grade of Rudolf Steiner School. This is where I met my fellow classmates and dear teacher Ms. Price, with the giddy and shy excitement of fi nding myself in a new space, a new environment. A journey was about to begin. That year I was introduced to fairies and gnomes that held special powers in nature; I went fairy dust smashing, and I met my childhood best friends alongside two that would stay with me until the end of my journey. Here they are today.

On my path there were many milestones and moments that I would have liked to share. But, for time’s sake here are a few of my favorite memories from my time at Steiner:

Grade 3: I entered the year with a childish determination that my friend Carolina and I, two best friends against the world, certainly did not need anyone else. By the end of the year, two had turned into four. Four musketeers trying to defend the forest of nature, Central Park, by sneaking in seeds to plant in secret gardens that we meticulously cultivated and kept notes on in a notebook. Becoming vegetarian, well minus the occasional prosciutto slice, at the end of the year became my way of life after my fi rst Hawthorne Valley Farm trip.

Reading, Reading, and Reading: If you know me well, you will know I love reading. From The Magic Treehouse series in kindergarten, the Percy Jackson series in sixth grade (inspired by the block on Ancient Greece), and the Queen of mystery, Agatha Cristie’s, novels to period pieces in eighth grade by Jane Austen (my favorite author). My bibliophilic ways began from those elementary years and are ever growing.

Grade 9: In this year I found myself without my old class for the fi rst time in eight years as I took a new turn on my journey: high school. It began with nervous apprehension from all of us, as we felt giddy to fi nally be back in a classroom after the Covid lockdown.

Grade 11: Let me just share this quote by the famed author Charles Dickens, which I believe sums that year for me quite nicely. “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” Pressure to get the highest grades and perform to the best of your abilities for the ever-coming college application was dreadfully stressful. Yet the Coney Island trip at the end of the year and being able to learn in depth about organs of animals through dissections with Dr. Martin gave that year both its trials and tribulations.

Grade 12: Counting down the days until my last language and math classes, fi nishing my last high school paper for Human Development, but also bowing for the last time on Thursday evening of our last performance of Clue. I was so ready to graduate. Then on our recent class trip to Washington state, the memory of calmness as we all sat on the revolving glass on the Seatle space needle looking into the setting sun, made me strikingly aware that this trip was in fact my goodbye to the road I called high school.

I sometimes wonder what would have become of me had my journey not included Steiner. A road not taken. Would I have been able to be this mini horticulturalist and fairy lover at heart, a classics enthusiast, an enjoyer of a good book, and a drinker of warm tea in classes if I had not taken the Steiner road? More than a decade; twelve years (WOW). I realized that I am who I am because of the twists and turns I have taken on my path at Steiner, and so are all of you my classmates. All the years with Ms. Price when she was there and when she was gone, alongside the rips and main lessons that came and went in our time in high school created the people we are today.

This road in our lives has just concluded, and now we begin a new journey, a road not taken yet. Let me fi nish with the words of the great ancient conqueror Hannibal, “aut viam inveniam aut faciam.” Which is Latin for, “I shall either fi nd a way or make one.” I very much hope you, my graduating class, will fi nd or make your place and decide to take the road less traveled on the journey ahead, for it truly does make all the difference.