During Williston Northampton School’s 185th Commencement, senior Lauren Martinez ’26 was selected by her classmates to give the class address. Below are her words in full. To read more about Commencement, click here. To watch Martinez’s speech, go to our YouTube channel.
Good morning everyone, and welcome to the parents, families, friends, faculty, underclassmen, and the great class of 2026. My name is Lauren Martinez, and this is the last time I get to introduce myself as a four-year senior day student from South Hadley, Massachusetts.
I am incredibly honored to be speaking to all of you on behalf of my fellow seniors. Standing up here, and getting to see everyone’s faces at once for the last
time, I think I’ve found the best seat in the house. I want to thank my classmates for choosing me to speak today, Mr. Hill and Mr. Hazen White, and the faculty, friends, and family that have helped get all of us to this point. Also thanks to Coach K for giving me this stool to stand on, so that everyone can both hear me and see me.
Standing here right now, on my stool, at this ceremony is still pretty surreal to me, and I don’t think it’s going to hit me for another week that I won’t be returning to this quad with my friends next fall. It has been the privilege of my life to look forward to coming back to this campus and the smiling, welcoming faces that fill it, for the last four years.
However, I must first acknowledge these past four years did not start with the confidence that they would be as great as they were. Four years ago, when my parents asked if I’d like to tour Williston, I said, “Why would I do that?” And my parents countered, “Why not?” I didn’t argue with them because I like living. But also, because it was a good question. Why not? There were three main things I remember taking away from my tour.
- There was a pretty view from the bridge over
- As class president Alex said at Convocation opening our senior year, “The computers looked pretty cool.”
And 3: Everyone here seemed to be pretty nice.
I was easily pleased, so, in 2022, I left the school district and classmates I had known for my entire life and started a new chapter. And the girl that became a wildcat on a rainy September day four years ago was an entirely different person than the one standing here now.
This fourteen-year-old girl needed to have everything under control. She was constantly worried about what would happen if things didn’t go the way she expected them to. She had no idea that her next four years at Williston would indeed be filled with moments she never could have expected.
That fall, she had initially registered for girls JV soccer. After the first day, though, her parents found and out and forced her, sorry – I mean, encouraged her, to try out for varsity. When she protested, her parents again asked her the question, “Why not?” And she had a million reasons, the first, of course, being, “What if I don’t make it”? Followed by, “What if I embarrass myself?” and “What if nobody likes me?”
Still, the next day, she walked into varsity tryouts with her new Williston water bottle and prayers, and by the grace of God, she made the team. And while it was really cool to earn a spot on the roster, she was even happier to walk out of tryouts with a new friend, a girl named Scarlette from Connecticut who played lacrosse. She ended up calling that girl her best friend for the next four years.
Now, next season, that winter, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do for her afternoon program and decided on swimming. She had swum competitively before and therefore thought that she’d be pretty decent at it. She wasn’t. She would get out of the pool twice every practice to use her inhaler. In her lane, though, was the only other freshman girl, who was from Korea and was named after a color: Blue. I never expected to find another one of my best friends while trying not to drown in the Babcock swimming pool, but I did. And, thanks to Williston, for the first time in my life, I felt supported and confident enough to stop asking myself what could go wrong and start asking myself the same question my parents did: Why not?
All of us ended up here at Williston, not by some random twist of fate, but by choice. Maybe it was the athletics or arts programs that drew you in, or the unique privilege of being in a town and not the middle of nowhere.
Maybe you just needed a change of scenery, or maybe it was more of your parents’ choice than your own, at the time. Williston taught me to continue making these choices, not based on what you know will happen, but because of what could happen.
Of course, I’ve had my share of unpleasant surprises here, from learning firsthand just how slippery the icy sidewalk gets in the winter, to the horrors that were taking Algebra 2 and running the yo-yo beep test at soccer tryouts. But I’ve also learned that setbacks and embarrassment are always temporary. Regret, on the other hand, is not.
And if I’m being honest, Williston has showed me that embarrassing memories and stories are much more enjoyable to carry than regret. So, whether you’re graduating today or taking your assessments next week, which, I feel for you, I hope the next time you face the decision to try something new, something unexpected, you ask yourself, “Why not?” You never know what or who might be waiting for you.
Another question or phrase I’ve learned to consider more often during my time at here is one that my teammate Yas mentioned this soccer season, which is, “How lucky are we?”
I know that the answer sometimes seems to be, “Not very lucky,” especially when you think about the pits of assessment week, or that cold, long stretch of classes between winter and spring break. But if you take one second to think in the middle of quiet or chaos here, you might find yourself in disbelief of how lucky we all are to be here.
I know one moment where I realized how lucky I am was at 5:52 in the morning on Monday, May 18th. The seniors had just escaped the Cain Sabina Athletic center after lock-in, running off adrenaline from energy drinks, and jumping in the bounce houses, or unrestful naps in the multipurpose room and squash courts. I was walking up to the res quad with my backpack, pillow, prom dress, and fellow seniors. The streets and sidewalks that are usually filled with the sounds of cars, chatter, and phones, were quiet except for the birds and the loud complaints of sleep-deprived seniors.
Standing there in the morning cold, lacking energy to make any conversation, I looked around and thought quietly for a couple minutes. I listened to the unmatched entertainment that were comments from Kat, Aiyana, and Daryn.
I laughed at Ruthie’s several unsuccessful attempts to open the EMV doors before 6am. I watched Maya, Mel, and Sadie look through the pictures from Zh’ky’s seemingly immaculate digital camera.
On the other side of the res quad and across the street, I watched the residents of Ford, Mem West, and John Wright carry their suits and significantly smaller overnight bags back to their dorms. It wasn’t an extraordinary moment. But right then and there, all I could think about was how lucky we are.
How lucky we are to stand among this group of people, people accomplished in academics, the arts, athletics, whose homes span across towns, countries, and continents, and call them our classmates. How lucky we are to complain about being exhausted because we spent the entire night swimming, dancing, singing karaoke, and playing sardines and minigolf with our best friends and the people who watched us grow without realizing it.
How lucky are we to have teachers and deans that gave up their midnights so that a bunch of 17- to 19-year-olds could enjoy their last Sunday night of high school. How lucky are we to have spent a year, six years, and everything in between, in a place that is more like home than a school and with people that are more like family than classmates and teachers.
Most of all, in the words of the wise Winnie the Pooh, “How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard?” If you can’t already tell, the answer is “Very lucky”, the type of luck that doesn’t come around often.
Taking one last blast to the past from my freshman year, I would often walk to and spend physics class laughing with two of my closest friends, Scarlette and Mia. One of the inside jokes, or “vocal stims”, as the kids say, that we developed during our time struggling in class was “Don’t count the days, make the days count.” We had gotten it off a “Quote of the Day” TikTok, and I guess we thought it was funny because we were freshmen, and we had all the time in the world. It would be forever until we could count the days to graduation. But you truly don’t realize just how much every day counts until they become your last, especially the little parts of your day that happen too many times to count but matter so much more than you could ever realize.
- The last time JT throws your uniform at you along with a “Go get ‘em”;
- the last time Lapan asks, “Any questions?” and you say no, even though you have many questions;
- the last time you almost cut the line at the grill but catch Robin watching you;
- even the last time you make the long trek from the chapel to schoolhouse, but get to catch your friends and favorite teachers on the way, making that seven-minute walk a little more worth it.
When it comes to writing, the golden rule is often to show, not tell. But I’ve been doing a lot of show so far and there are things too important to not just say flat out. So I want to say that I am so, so thankful for this place and these people, and I am truly going to miss being here from 8:30 to dinner time 5 days a Green week and 6 days a Blue week. I am thankful to be surrounded by classmates and teammates that become more than people you see on the field, dance studio, or in the classroom: but people that you grow to rely on and trust, who you laugh and cry with.
I am thankful for having teachers that care so much more about who you are than your ability to analyze poetry or write lab reports. I am thankful to wake up every morning, drive over Mt. Tom, and step into a place where we overlook the opportunities, friendships, and energy that fills this campus because of how often we get to experience it.
So, to the middle schoolers, freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and take care of this place. You’ll find that it will do the same for you. To the faculty, you already know the drill. Don’t miss us too much. I could talk all day and give more advice, but I was told I could get a diploma if and when I stopped. So, finally, to my fellow seniors, thank you all for being a part of my journey. It’s been an immense honor to be in all of yours’.
Please, please, please, don’t be a stranger. Let’s get our diplomas and get out of here. Thank you.