Marjie Lodwick
Good morning ladies and gentlemen, teachers, guests, and most importantly graduating students. It’s a great honor to be standing before you on behalf of the foreign teachers on such a monumental day.
In the last three years you have worked hard and played hard, you have laughed and smiled and cried, you have learned many things – some things you will remember, others you might forget. You have grown from young, uncertain, dependent children into strong, beautiful, confident, independent women. I have watched many of you grow, both in small ways and large, and I feel so lucky to have shared in your experience.
It is a strange truth that teachers will always learn more from their students than their students learn from them. This may be difficult to believe (unless you yourself have been a teacher) but believe me, it is true. So today I want to share with you some of the lessons that you, my students, have taught me over the last two years.
You have taught me courage. It takes courage to stand up and try to talk in a foreign language when all of your classmates (not to mention your American teacher) are watching and listening to you. It takes confidence to do something you have never done before, like a presentation, a debate, or a speech. In the next years you will have to do many new things, things you have never done before, things you have never even dreamed of doing. You will be afraid – of course. Everyone is afraid of doing new things. But the people who truly succeed in life are not the ones who don’t ever feel afraid. No, they are the ones who feel afraid, ye try to do new things anyway, in spite of their fears.
You have also taught me perseverance. Some days I have felt like a failure. Maybe I wasn’t able to explain a lesson effectively. Maybe I lost my patience. Maybe I didn’t understand why my students didn’t understand me. But from every failure, I have grown, I have learned, and I have made a new plan for how I will do better next time. In life we all meet failures. You must not allow your failures to stop you from trying. Instead they must be lessons that help you succeed in even greater ways in the future.
Finally, you have taught me that I will never stop learning. I may have graduated in 2010, but every day at Hwanan I have learned new skills, knowledge, and strengths. For many of you today will be your last day in school, but you will never have a last day being a student. You are leaving behind your classrooms, textbooks, and teachers, but you must never leave behind your desire to learn and grow.
I wish you all the best of luck, wherever your roads may take you. You will face many joys as well as sorrows, challenges and defeats, but as long as you don’t allow your fear to guide you, as long as you learn from your defeats, and as long as you never pass by an opportunity to be a student, I know your journeys will be successful.
Thank you very much.
