35 students honored
RICHMOND
Thirty-five young men and women graduated from Richmond High School, leaving the gymnasium on Saturday diplomas in hand.
Top-ranked students addressed their classmates during the ceremony, giving some words of advise to help them move on from high school to their futures.
Principal Steven Lavoie addressed the students, facing them directly, also offered some advice.
He asked them to promise they keep in touch with each other, adding “Don’t be a guy my age who couldn’t tell you where he is classmates are.”
Success comes at a price, Lavoie said, and “don’t fear failure.”
Push yourself to the brink, he said, adding failure is the greatest teaching tool.
The community has invested in the students, he told them, and asked them at some point to “find a way to come back to Richmond” and give something back to the community that supported them.
“Last one,” Lavoie said. “Be safe. Pinky swear?”
As graduates lined up in front of the school after graduation, friends and family congratulated them one-by-one, shaking hands and embracing.
Surrounded by her family, graduate Jessica Anair, who attended Richmond schools since pre-K, said many of the students graduating Saturday had been together since then.
“I have pretty much my whole family, as do most of the other people,” Anair said, as cousins waited nearby to congratulate her and other extended family.
“It didn’t really hit me until I was walking across the stage and they called my name; and I knew. It’s all about to change,” Anair said.
She plans to study nursing now that she’s graduated. “I’m excited and it’s slowly sinking in,” she said.
Aaron Miller attended Richmond schools since seventh grade.
On Saturday, they woke up late, put on some shorts and “showed up,” he said.
He wasn’t nervous, Miller said, but said some of classmates were.
Miller, who will attend the University of Maine at Farmington to be a math teacher, credited his teachers with inspiring him to become a math teacher.
“I think it was kind of all (of the teachers) together,” he said. “It’s a really good environment and I really do like math a lot.”
The students were headed to The Forks to go whitewater rafting on a Project Graduation outing after Saturday’s ceremonies.
View more words from Principal Steven Lavoie on The Times Record Facebook page.
dmoore@timesrecord.com
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