Jivan Gill and grad Anmol Malhi take a “selfie” after graduation ceremonies at SOSS on June 25. Photo by Lyonel Doherty
Veteran teacher Doris Kuehn saved the best advice for last when addressing more than 90 graduates at SOSS last week: Pay your own cell phone bills.
Great, thanks mom.
After 28 years, Kuehn has amassed a lot of advice for young people, particularly graduates who are leaving the nest.
Her advice:
Don’t be a whiner
Learn to drive before you leave town
Choose your friends wisely
Find your passion
Don’t be a couch potato or sit in your basement and play Xbox all day
Have a social life, but make it face-to-face (don’t spend your life online or buried in your cell phone)
Math teacher Barry Gruntman showed a picture of himself from 1975, which was about 1.5 billion seconds ago. (Those math teachers.)
But wait. There’s more.
Gruntman, who graduated 40 years ago, said the earth’s population was 4.1 billion. Today it’s 7.3 billion, and he estimates that number to grow to 11.666 billion by 2055 (40 years from now at the current growth rate of 1.14 per cent per year or about 2.6 people every second of every day).
Gruntman acknowledged his grad buddies in the audience, including Cheryl Andrews and Deb Douglas.
He asked the graduates to imagine that, in 1975:
A Snickers bar cost seven cents
Candies (MoJos) cost three for a penny
The Honda Civic didn’t exist
His first car was a VW at a cost of $375, with no seatbelts. Now you need a $30,000 computer to tell you when to change your oil
Gasoline was about 40 cents per gallon.
Phones were not smart; they were attached to the wall.
Sometimes there was only one phone per neighbourhood (called the party line).
A mouse was a rodent that made girls scream.
Students didn’t use calculators because there weren’t any.
When not in school, kids jumped on their bikes and flew out of the house and never returned until the street lights came on. Parents didn’t worry and nobody called Social Services.
When graduates ask Gruntman what they should do after graduation, he can only say that he has no idea. Who knows what the world will be like in five or 10 years.
Heck, General Motors and Google have each developed a functional prototype “driverless” car that could be in production within a decade, Gruntman said.
The teacher quoted Albert Einstein who once said: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
Gruntman encouraged the grads to listen to their parents once in a while; they might actually know something.
“It seemed the older I got the smarter my parents became.”
He asked the grads to ask themselves at the end of each day if they made a positive difference.
Gruntman told the grads that, in the blink of an eye, it will be 40 years from now.
He quoted an American author who said people will forget what you said and forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
“You made me laugh and you keep me young,” Gruntman told the grads.
Valedictorian Olivia Ruddiman kept her speech short and sweet, inspiring the graduates to embrace the future and do great things.
“It seems like yesterday that we were the Grade 8 students overwhelmed and frightened by the older students, trying to figure out where our next class was while remembering which block rotation it was that week.”
Ruddiman said they will feel like Grade 8s all over again when they start the next step in their lives, whether it be furthering their education or going straight into the workforce.
“In our future lets turn our privilege of education and wealth of knowledge into becoming powerful and influential leaders in our society.”
Ruddiman said it’s not simply enough to try and get by in life because that doesn’t move the world forward. She noted the grads must try to excel in everything they do.
“The future is truly in our hands so let’s make positive choices to protect our environment and our health. Let’s not live up to the prediction as the first generation that does not live as long as our parents.”
Ruddiman thanked their teachers who inspired them, made them work hard and showed some of them their true passions.
Superintendent of Schools Bev Young said the world needs “different” people, so she urged the grads to stay quirky if they are quirky – don’t change who you are.
“You have a more exciting road ahead of you than any generation.”
