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June 5, 2010

"Not only a time to look forward, but to look back"

Kevin Jones Jacksonville Daily Progress

JACKSONVILLE —

The question is not IF you will change the world, you will, the question is HOW will you change the world.

 The JHS senior class of 2010 graduated on Friday, opening new doors for hundreds of students ready and willing to succeed in the world which today is not easily conquered.

As president of the school board, James Houser welcomed the senior class of 2010 by letting them know just how proud of them he was.

He spoke inspirational words of wisdom to the graduates.

"As general Colin Powell once said, there are no secrets to success so don't waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty for those of whom you work, and persistence."

After Houser was finished, Valedictorian Luke Weaver stepped to the podium to give his final thoughts on his four years at Jacksonville High School.

"William Blake once wrote, that what is now proved was once only imagined. For the past four years we have only imagined" Weaver said.

"Now is the time to prove ourselves. Since pre-school we have dreamed and we have planned what we would be when we grew up — now we are here, beginning tonight, for the rest of our lives, we take our dreams out into the rest of the world only to turn them into reality."

Weaver thanked his classmates for being the friends he has grown to know and love.

He ended his Valedictorian address by saying

"C.S. Lewis once wrote, we are not all living in a world where all roads are Radii of a circle, and are all therefore if followed long enough drawn gradually nearer, and finally meet at the center. Rather we are in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two... at each fork, you must make a decision— tomorrow we will branch out and go our separate ways...we leave behind our separate lives.

Now is different, not just a time to look forward, but a time to look back — Thanks guys, it's been fun."

Superseding Weaver was Salutatorian of the Class of 2010, Mikaela Villavisencio.

In a very humorous tone, Villavisencio began her address by saying "Through my hard work and awesome procrastination skills I stand before you today as your senior class salutatorian or as my brother so charmingly reminded me the other day, "Always second Best"

"After today, many changes will occur in our lives— we will no longer be the senior class of 2010 but the senior class of 2014, our lives will no longer be governed by a loud ringing bell but by our own sense of responsibility."

"C.S. lewis once said, 'It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird but it would be harder to learn to fly while remaining an egg,' We are like eggs at present we cannot go on being an ordinarily decent egg, we must be hatched or go bad, personally I don't want to be the rotten flightless egg of society."

Villavisencio encouraged the class to not look on their lives as being wasted on school but that the time in school was just eight-teen years of hopefully a long and fruitful life.

She ended her Salutatorian address by saying, "Good luck with all your future endeavors, and I must say, while the security officers were searching us you all looked lovely in your fully covering clothing."

The commencement exercises were in the foreground of a beautiful East Texas evening and the event ending with hundreds of "Royal Blue" caps being thrown into the air to the sound of the familiar school song.

The clock starts over, another school year is to come, next year we look forward to the senior class of 2011.

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