Diplomas were handed out to 100 members of the Lisbon High School class of 2014 on Friday who graduated during a ceremony held at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee in Lewiston.

Class president Jennifer Smith told her fellow graduates to take control of their lives and as they are reaching to meet their goals, to take time to remember where they started.

“This is the next step in life,” Smith said. “Try to make a difference in the tough world we live in. Whatever you want to get out of life you will. Just remember, no one will come knocking on your door handing you success. You’ve got to be a go-getter.”

Class speaker Shantal MacWhinnie told students they will make mistakes along their journey “but promise me you will always learn from them.”

Students need to thank family and friends who have supported them, but more importantly “you need to thank the individuals that doubted you; those who said you couldn’t accomplish goals. … These are the people who forced you to work harder in order to prove them wrong,” MacWhinnie continued.

Jennifer-Lynn Clifford also addressed the graduating class Friday, telling them how fortunate Lisbon students are to have been born to their circumstances.

“Each and every one of you is certainly special and capable of being the best,” Clifford said. Students need grit, which distinguishes the success of people: “the passion and perseverance to pursue longer goals, is what enable us to make more of what we have; to turn limited resources into unlimited opportunity.”

“In the future I envision a system of universal education that acts as a level playing field, so that no matter where, how and when a student is born, they are not limited to where they can go,” Clifford said. They can’t control the circumstances they are born into; “what we can control, however, is what we make of them.”

Clifford concluded, “Be gritty, be limitless, you are special. Go out and prove it to the world.”

Commencement speaker Gov. Paul LePage told graduates his is a story of an example of an American dream. After leaving home at 11, he said he met an elderly man once who left him with 10, two-letter words: “If it is to be, it is up to me.”

He barely graduated from high school and applied to about 50 colleges, and “got rejected by every single one of them.

“But I had a mentor. The second mentor of my life was the president of Husson University who said, ‘We’ll give you a chance. We’ll take a chance on you.’ I graduated from Husson as a top student. I went onto the University of Maine with a master’s degree,” in the top four and went on to work 40 years in business,” LePage added.

LePage urged students to give back. Mentors are critical in their lives and will help move them forward inch by inch. “Never in my life did I ever think I’d be a governor, ever,” LePage said. “But I carved out a little piece of that American dream.”

“Do not be average, because average means you are as close to the bottom as you are the top. Aim for the top,” LePage said. “Dream high, reach for the stars. If you have to come back down, settle for the moon, but always reach higher than you ever expect you can achieve.”

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