Good afternoon and thank you to all of the friends, family, faculty and staff, priests, Bishop Kemme, as well as everybody who has come out to support us here today.

Before I begin, I’d like to shout out Reece Renteria, who’s birthday is today, and who has addressed me as valedictorian every single time we’ve talked for the past 6 years, Shout out to Toby Harter, Zeinab Hachem, and Molly Lasak who reassured me about this speech. Shout out to Slayde Mesker, ummm, he really just wanted a shout out, and finally, shout out to my parents who made the incredibly difficult decision to attend my graduation instead of flying to Fiji at 8:00 AM today. Anyway, without further ado,

Dear Class of 2025,

It's me, Austin Tran, writing to you as of Wednesday, May 14th, 2025 at 1:38 A.M. Congratulations! For those of you who may not know me, I’m pretty notorious for saving all of my studying and homework until the last minute. And this speech was going to be no exception. But amidst threats that I wouldn’t be speaking here today, here I am sheepishly writing it right before Farewell Mass in seven hours. Frankly, I’m not sure what I’m doing, and after dumping out all the contents of my backpack to search for the guidelines, I realized that I threw it away right after my physics final last Friday.

In hindsight, it's kind of an enigma when people expect me to be able to give them good advice when I myself am not even sure what I’m doing most of the time. But honestly, I’ve finally realized that that’s okay. In the grand scheme of things, all of us can probably admit that we don’t know what we’re doing. We can pretend that we know what’s going on and we can act like we know what we’ll want in four, ten, or twenty years, just as I thought I knew what I wanted to say before going into this speech. But here I am, at 2:12 AM on the Wednesday before graduation, googling, “how to write a good speech.”  

Even though I can pretend that I was just too lazy to write this speech, or that I didn’t really care to begin with, the truth of the matter was that I was too scared to even start. This speech marks the last ever assignment I’ll have as a Bishop Carroll student, and honestly I’m scared to finish it. I’m scared because it’s hard to encapsulate all of the feelings I’ve had in the last four years at Bishop Carroll, to express the gratitude to all of the people I’ve met and to all those who have supported me, to show how much I’ve been affected by each and every one of you, and to thank everyone for the love I’ve felt in the past four years, all in just a short three minutes (or whatever the guidelines said). However, I want you to know that it’s okay to be scared, it's okay to not know where we’re going and to be nervous of what lies ahead. I want you to know that, “it’s okay to not know, to admit that you have no clue what’s going on, to ask for help, because a lot of the time, no one knows what’s going on.”

It’s now 3:07 AM on the Wednesday before graduation, and after clocking what I’ve just written at around three minutes and nineteen seconds, it’s probably best to wrap it up before Bishop Kemme falls asleep. I also had a joke in here somewhere about Mr. Dester, but he’s not here so, umm, hi Dan, I hope you’re thinking of me right now.  Anyway, in a hopeless attempt to verbalize all of my gratitude to you all: thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you all.

To the faculty and staff who worked hard to push us to graduate, to the people who worked with us to help us secure a place in the future and who supported us as we navigated our high school lives, thank you. To the lunch ladies who would save us a few meals in the back for when we made it to the front of the line, thank you.

To the teachers, thank you for devoting your time to giving us a quality education, for supporting us, for smiling, for caring, even if things weren’t always great in your own lives. Thank you so much for taking care of us and being role models as we developed into adults. To the teacher who consoled me when I cried during my freshman year, thank you. To the teacher who asked me if I was okay when she could tell I wasn’t fine, thank you. To the teacher who gave me an extension on a paper when things around me felt like they were collapsing, thank you. And to the teachers who let us get a glimpse of their own personal lives and formed relationships with us, the ones who poured themselves into their work and truly cared as we opened ourselves to them in the past four years, thank you, thank you, thank you.

To our families, thank you for being there to support us as we moved into a new stage of our lives, and for being here as we move into yet another new stage. To the parents, thank you for all of the late-night supply runs, the drop offs during our freshman and sophomore year, and the visits to the office to pick up confiscated phones. Thank you for all of the forms filled out, the papers proofread, and the patience you practiced while we grew up.

And to my own parents, thank you for the love you’ve shown me, the support you've always given me, and the sacrifices you’ve made for me, for crossing an ocean for me to be able to cross this stage. Thank you for dealing with me through all the arguments, all the annoyances I’ve caused, and all the issues I may have created. Although I may not always be able to express it, thank you for everything you’ve given me, and I love you so so so much.

Finally to the students, my friends, my peers, you, the graduating class of 2025, thank you. Thank you for introducing me to my favorite songs, my favorite movies, my favorite books, and my hobbies. Thank you for my sense of humor, my mannerisms, and my memories from the past four years. Thank you for all of the words we’ve shared and all of the laughing and crying that we’ve done together. Thank you for the study guides, the quizlets, the notes, and the homework answers. Thank you for all of the late night texts answered, all of the food we’ve eaten together and classes we’ve talked through. Thank you for everything. Thank you for saving my life.

In my Calc II class, we tried to create a web of how every single person in our grade is connected, and although we only got about half way through, I realized how close everyone is, even if you’ve never met them. I realized how much of an impact one person can have on you, whether they know it or not. So please, realise that there is always someone who needs you, someone you’ve played a role in forming. There's always someone who’s looking around for you in class and wonders where you are when you’re gone, even if you’ve only exchanged a few words with them, or none at all. You will always be loved more than you will ever know, and someone you used to be friends with, five years from now, would give anything to be in the same room as you. So I’m going to ask just one thing: don’t become strangers. Text each other about your life. Tell each other about the new friends you meet at work or in college. Wish each other happy birthday, invite each other to your weddings. Don’t let the, “let’s keep in touches” said in the parking lot after this graduation be wishful thinking. Reach out when you need help, because you don’t know how much it may help the other person too.

It is now 4:15 AM on the Wednesday before graduation. I’ve cried too much and I really need some sleep, so I’d like to end with a quote that I first read almost exactly ten years ago that appears at the end of Minecraft when you beat the game. It says, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Thank you for everything, and congratulations Class of 2025. Sincerely, Your Friend, Austin Tran