New Hyde Park Valedictorian Takes Audience Along the Yellow Brick Road

described how the years spent at school felt like a journey through Oz at her future school, Hofstra, Sunday afternoon at the high school graduation. Below is a copy of her speech.

When you’re little, the world is black and white, plain and a bit boring. It’s Kansas – and with a tornado known as “sixth grade graduation”, we are thrown out of that world and into the colorful, ridiculous world of Oz – New Hyde Park Memorial. A place that’s foreign and unlike anything we’ve ever known. We’re told we can get out of this world as long as we make it to graduation.

Graduation! Our Emerald City with our mysterious Wizard. The place we’ve all been looking to find for six years. That magical place that every single teacher, counselor, parent and friend has mentioned. It’s supposed to be the end and the beginning – a paradox hard to understand until you’re really here.

It’s only fitting that our story begins in Munchkinland. Because that’s what we were when we came to this school – munchkins. We were tiny and young and optimistic. We hadn’t grown up yet.

But each of us has a Wicked Witch of the West – that trouble that we realize will chase us along the "yellow brick road" our fellow Munchkins keep singing about. Those demons can follow us because the road isn’t that hard to find. It’s yellow and it’s brick and it’s high school, and we all have to take it to get to the Emerald City.

We first stepped on the yellow brick road at age 12, and we can saw the glory of Oz up ahead of us – but there were lots of twists and turns, and we tried to avoid the Wicked Witch as best we could, and so it’s took a while. We put on those ruby red shoes, and we began to walk.

 We’re not alone for that long though – we find ourselves a scarecrow pretty quickly. But he apparently doesn’t have a brain. They say that you learn from your mistakes – but you and your new friend who have no clue what you should be doing probably make more mistakes than necessary. Forgetting your locker combination; putting your trust in the wrong friend; writing your research paper the night before it is due. Mistakes we make with our scarecrow, our first best friend, the one who’s smart enough to get us out of any bad situation. The friend who taught us that we are the ones to develop our own minds.

He still swears he has no brain though, and so he jumps on the yellow brick road and travels to the Emerald City with you.

We keep going, and soon we find another friend – a tin man with no heart. He usually pops up right when we need him – when our Wicked Witch is causing all kinds of trouble in our lives. Someone bullying you for being different; your parents angry at you for not being perfect; you being disappointed in yourself, because you wanted to be someone important, and no one even knows who you are. Those are the real-life Wicked Witches, and they are the ones that make us want to give up. We need someone to hang on to; we need a heart. And what have we got? A tin man, who has more heart and more love than we ever expected to receive.

He still swears he has no heart though, and so he jumps on the yellow brick road and travels to the Emerald City with you.

It may not be until much later that we find that third friend – that cowardly lion who really isn’t much of a coward after all. Because he’s brave, suddenly you are too. School may have been bumpy in those first four years, but when we enter junior and senior year, the road becomes scary. SATs, AP exams, college applications, choosing a college. We need bravery, we need strength – we need courage. We may have been able to run away from everything before, but you can’t run forever, and you can’t run from the future – you can’t be a coward when it comes to the big decisions. It takes nerve, and then there’s the Lion, who says he has none but really has enough of it to make sure you’re strong enough to make the decisions too.

He still swears he has no courage though, and so he jumps on the yellow brick road and travels to the Emerald City with you.

And so we travel through high school, gaining brains and hearts and courage. We melted our Witch, we confronted our demons, and we won.

But when we confront the great and mighty Wizard of Oz, we may be confused. And when we peek behind the curtain, we find the wizard is just a man, and not an even extraordinary one.

Because the Emerald City…well, it’s not what we’re led to believe it is. It looks amazing on the outside, but when you’re there, it doesn’t have anything that you’ve been searching for. And maybe that’s what graduation is too – we’ve spent so long thinking about this day, counting down to it for years, that we’ve built it up to be the best thing ever – we’re finally done with high school! But that’s bittersweet, because that means we’re moving on – from the bad things, yes, but also from the good.

But there is one thing we can all do – we’ve still got on those ruby red shoes. We’ll leave the Emerald City, we’ll leave this graduation ceremony, we’ll leave high school behind – but we’ve still got those red shoes. And every once in a while, when we’re at college and we think about what it was like on that windy yellow brick road, we can click our heels together and instead of going back to Kansas, we can come back to New Hyde Park – the place we take for granted, but the place that’s undoubtedly shaped us more than any other. The place where we grew up. The place with Mom and Dad – and if you’re lucky, a Nicole and a Stephen. The place that has the people we’ve grown up with– the place that has our scarecrow, our tin man, our lion just waiting for us. The yellow brick road might have ended, but the long walk is just beginning.

You won't even remember high school. Well, you'll remember it a little. It'll be a story in your head. But that's ok; we're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, alright? Because it was, you know; it was the best. That’s all this journey is, just one link the chain of the story of our lives. All stories have an ending, even this one. But I do think that it’s a happily ever after story, even with all the bumps along the way.

It’s been an honor to be with you all. Congratulations and best of luck to the Class of 2011.