Commencement 2023

“Remember, there’s a freshman version of yourself out there that is proud of you right now. So proud. Think about them. Think about who you were. Think about who you’ve become.”

“Despite our efforts to make the most out of our Zoom experiences, it simply wasn’t the same as seeing your faces in person. I can vividly recall the exhilaration of being able to run to my classmates and embrace them tightly after a year and a half apart. While we all hated that phase of our high school lives, I believe that without it, we wouldn’t have truly appreciated the indescribable feeling of togetherness that washes over us when we’re all physically present.”

“You can’t prevent what you can’t predict. Understand that failure is a part of life, and it will happen, and move on.”

–Parker Ward ’82, invited speaker, a former commercial airline pilot who became a paraplegic following a 2004 snowmobile accident To read more and view a replay of Commencement and Baccalaureate, visit mercersburg.edu/magazine.