Page 15 - Priorities #72

On June 1, Priory graduated 72 students at the 59th commencement ceremony. Head of School Tim Molak welcomed the excited crowd with a few memorable Senior quotes from the recent yearbook. “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them,” and “My brain is like Google Chrome, 32 tabs are open, eight are not responding and there is music playing somewhere,” Mr. Molak read with a smile.
Student speaker, Vivian Chuang ’19, delivered a heartfelt personal message on how a single question changed her life and lead her to Priory. That single question, “Vivian, what do you want to do with your life?” was asked when she was 11 by her English teacher. Her quick answer of, “to be successful,” made her look deeper into what her definition of success was. Three years later, she was living 10,000 kilometers away from home, “kind of in the middle of nowhere, where food is overpriced, speaking primarily English, and attending a religious private boarding school, my second home, Priory,” Vivian remarked.
Little did Vivian know but during her four years at Priory, it would become her most life- changing experience. “What the Priory community taught me the most, is to redefine
my idea of success,” Vivian explained. “At Priory, we learned to live. To live a life that
is so much more than academic achievements. We learned that our identity should
be more than an A on a test, a 4.0 GPA, or a college acceptance letter. We learned that
we can be athletes, musicians, artists, engineers, actors, or all of them. We learned to
appreciate our similarities and celebrate our differences. We found our identity and
helped others find theirs. We met friends, mentors, or family that have guided us to
become the best version of ourselves.”
The commencement speaker was Mark Lukach, an internationally bestselling
author and ninth grade dean and history teacher at Athenian School, but more importantly a former beloved teacher at Priory from 2006-2010. Mark reflected on his
time at Priory with what he referred to as “only at the Priory moments.” Moments
including his first encounter with Brother Edward, who found Mark working late one
night. To his surprise, Brother Edward told him to go home and be with his newlywed
wife. “Here I thought I was going to impress him and how hard I was working, and instead I was being told to go home, to remember that life needs balance,” he explained.
In closing, Mark shared a realization he had about life and plants. He explained that a century plant takes decades to grow approximately six-feet-tall, but then unexpectedly a stalk shoots out of the middle of the plant at a rate of an inch an hour and can grow up to 25 feet tall. The plants “sit there, humbly and quietly for so many years, asking for so little except an occasional rain shower, and then fearlessly, together, they rose up at a breathtaking pace, like it was their destiny, their whole life encapsulated in this remarkable moment of growth and beauty,” he said. He compared the century plant to a rose, which blooms over and over, but needs so much care and attention of pruning, fertilizing, and watering. Mark found a century plant and it made him wonder about his own life, “What was I doing with my time? Was I a rose, or a century plant?” After realizing he was a century plant, he expressed to the graduates, “It’s OK to be a century plant. It’s ok to do one great thing. Not all of us can be roses. You don’t have to be excellent every time. Instead, when the moment is right, you will burst onto the scene to do that thing you’ve always been called to do, and it will be the greatest thing you ever do.”
Congratulations, Class of 2019!
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Commencement speaker Mark Lukach
US GRADUATION