Promenade

“We thank you—our graduating seniors—for your leadership during this trying year, your strength, your courage, your determination, your sharp intellect, your creative spirit, your empathy, your sense of purpose. Your backpacks are full of deep friendships, ideas fostered and challenged, new endeavors undertaken, fears conquered, and hearts opened.”

AYA MURATA P’19, ’21

Associate Director, College Counseling “I wish for each and every one of you that you can begin to prioritize your joy, think deeply about the positive impact you can make on others, redefine success for yourself, and recognize that you are more than enough. This joyful, kind, successful life is a life of being a cheerleader and being cheered on by the amazing people you choose to surround yourself with.”

ELIZABETH GLAZER ’21

“There will always be people in your community with different priorities, different beliefs. I encourage you to take time to pause and to listen to them. You don’t have to agree, but I hope you will listen. Be constructive with your responses. Be kind. We all have different strengths to bring to this world.”

KRIS MCCARTHY P’16, ’19, ’21

“Your education has taught you to embrace the glorious but often difficult, complex truth of the human experience.”

RAYNARD S. KINGTON, MD, PhD, P’24

Head of School Address to the Class of 2021, June 6

Let me add my welcome to our students and their guests, our faculty and staff, and members of our Board of Trustees who are with us today. As I first began to think about what I would say to you today, I did a mental scan of all the commencement ceremonies I have attended in my life. I have been a graduate, a faculty member, an audience member, a commencement speaker, an honorary degree recipient. I have survived ceremonies in burning sun, in unseasonably cold weather, in the rain. But the first commencement ceremony that I can remember was my graduation from Pimlico Junior High School, a public junior high school (as they were called at the time) just a block away from the famous Pimlico Racetrack in Baltimore. Not only was this my first real graduation ceremony that I can remember, it was also the first time that I spoke at a graduation ceremony: I was the valedictorian of my class and was asked to speak. I remember that the entire class could not fit into the school auditorium so there were two ceremonies, back to back, and I spoke at both.

My clearest memory of that commencement is not of the actual ceremony—what I said and saw—but instead, of the suit that I wore. I was one of five children—four boys and a girl—and when a significant occasion required a new suit for one of the boys, there was often planning in advance so that my father could accompany my mother and whichever one of us needed a suit to the clothing store in the break between my father’s office hours when he saw his patients. I made it home from school as soon as I could on the day when I had to buy a suit, and we rushed to a new men’s clothing store in a suburban strip mall that sold both traditional conservative suits and more stylish suits that were in vogue at the time. A salesman greeted us and led us