When Manhasset High School valedictorian William Delaney was a boy, his uncle would often challenge him to find different places on a massive world map he kept above his bed, and as he got older the destinations grew increasingly remote.
The search was a game that made the world a little bit smaller, instilling in Delaney a love of geography that he said came in handy when he arrived at the Manhasset Secondary School for the first time four years ago, unsure how he’d find his way around the building.
“For most of our lives, the paths we’ve walked have been carefully charted, mostly by people other than ourselves. The state requires us to go to school, teachers map our exactly what we’ll do each day and parents tell us what to do when it comes to almost everything else,” he said during the school’s 95th commencement services Friday. “While I can’t make promises about your parents becoming less involved as you move to the next phase of your life, I can assure you that we are taking a step into the uncharted wilderness, to that undiscovered country we call the future.”
“It is almost as if, as we go through life, more and more we are the cartographers, sketching maps of our surroundings even as we are treading that terrain for the first time,” he added.
The 244 graduates of the Class of 2015 received their diplomas during a twilight ceremony outside the Manhasset Secondary School and participated in the ceremonial turning of the tassel before tossing their caps into the air and heading off on their paths to college.
Salutatorian Jessica Kim’s path has been that of the researcher conducting experiments in a laboratory, but in her address she said research is done by all members of a school community.
She noted athletes scouting opposing teams and perfecting plays and singers honing their voices as a means of researching their own personal experiments — but it wasn’t until the athlete came together with his teammates and the singer joined the choir that their research was completed.
When she and her classmates’ experiments had reached their conclusions at Manhasset, and they began counting down the days before graduation, Kim said, they brought coloring books to school to pass the time.
Some colored inside the lines, bringing to life Spider-Man’s costume in its traditional red and blue, while others made him green and purple like the Incredible Hulk.
Together, she said, the class made their coloring books truly indicative of the Class of 2015.
“After all,” she said, “it’s the coloring process, not the completed picture, that has shaped who we have become and who we will be.”
In her address, class president Danielle Nicosia said the graduates will be prepared to face upcoming challenges in college because they have conquered so many obstacles together at Manhasset.
Nicosa — who along with Caelan Adams Clinton, Emma Elisabeth Hanley, Griffin Webster Hyde, Carter L. Paterson and science research teacher Peter Guasetlla was inducted into the Silver M Society — said she was proud to represent her class in student government and that the Manhasset Secondary School would always be a second home to the class.
“You walk into the hallway for the first time and it’s empty, it’s a shell, but fill this building and its hallways with people who in turn fill it with love, and it’s so much more than that,” she said.
