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St. Luke's School 90th Commencement Celebration

NBT
(Includes photo gallery)
A glorious day greeted St. Luke’s class of 2019 as the school’s 90th Commencement Exercises began. Seniors lined both sides of a walkway applauding and calling out kind words as their teachers streamed past and into the Athletic Center where the ceremony took place.
Seniors entered after their teachers and received a prolonged standing ovation in recognition of their years of hard work and this milestone in their journeys. Head of School Mark Davis welcomed everyone and shared a personal comment about each one of the 71 graduates—a cherished tradition in a school where every individual is truly known.

Davis told students: “Our school’s mission—a deep love of learning, a strong moral compass, the commitment to serve, and the confidence to lead—calls on us to encourage in you something more, something deeper and truer, something bigger than any of us as individuals, something that reminds you that happiness and fulfillment have everything to do with who you become, and very little to do with what you become.”

St. Luke’s 2019 Valedictorian, Carolina Warneryd, who heads to Massachusetts Institute of Technology this fall, echoed Davis telling classmates: “The most important thing about the SLS community is the support we give one another—support we should pass on to others in the future. Anne Frank wrote, ‘How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.’ I think Frank meant that improving the world begins in small ways—this is a message our teachers embody every day through all they give us, and it’s something we should take to heart. ”
Salutatorian Georgia Rosenberg, headed to Stanford University, reminded her class that they don’t need to have all the answers. She spoke of the lies we are told or tell ourselves “when we can’t explain something, either because it is overly complex, or simply because it is too big, too scary, too unknown.” She observed: “….Our teachers are what binds us together. Their wisdom will propel us through our unknown as we each begin to search for our own version of truth.”

A particularly relevant message for graduates came from St. Luke’s Board Chair, James Andersen. He shared “four truths” that morning including: “Stocks don’t go straight up, and neither do people. This seems obvious, but many people—especially young people—don’t seem to fully process this truth. Instead of seeing in failure the opportunity to learn, they feel the weight of not measuring up. There’s a saying that success is fleeting, but so too is failure, if you’re willing to believe in yourself.”

Davis summed up the intense and often conflicting emotion of the day, calling it a beautiful sorrow —the sadness of endings mixed with the joy of accomplishment and excitement of new beginnings.

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St. Luke’s School is a secular (non-religious), private school in New Canaan, CT for grades 5 through 12 serving over 35 towns in Connecticut and New York. Our exceptional academics and diverse co-educational community foster students’ intellectual and ethical development and prepare them for top colleges. St. Luke’s Center for Leadership builds the commitment to serve and the confidence to lead.