Ledyard Scholar’s Address – Bianca Planeta

Good evening, everyone. Today I stand here in front of my 166 fellow classmates and soon to be Ledyard High School graduates. For the past four years, we’ve spent our days in classrooms learning about cellular respiration and the quadratic formula, writing essays, and trying to sight-read music. Sometimes I’m not sure that a lot of that information will carry any weight in the rest of our lives. However, no matter what facts or skills we take from high school, I think the most valuable thing we can take is our friendships and our memories.

Yes, we learned about cellular respiration, which I’m sure not even a handful of us actually understand, but we’ll always have the memories with our freshmen year lab partner. We spent countless English classes peer reviewing other people’s essays, but it’s the reviewer we remember, not what we wrote about. And while some of us may have forgotten how to solve a quadratic equation, I’m sure we can all remember who we sat next to us in math or the teacher who made us enjoy their class so much. Throughout high school we’ve had the opportunity to interact and meet and bond with many people, in ways we may never be able to again after today.

I grew up as a Girl Scout. I wouldn’t necessarily say I was a good one; I mean, I never actually went on any of the camping trips, but nevertheless I was a Girl Scout. In both school and girl scouting, there have been things I’ve forgotten. I mean I’ve learned how to start a fire probably a hundred times, but I still can never remember how to do it. But while I never retained how to start a fire, the thing that really stuck with me from Girl Scouts was that one silly old rhyme that I’m sure many of you have heard before: “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, and the other’s gold.” As we move on from high school and create newer “silver” friendships, I hope we will also strive to keep our precious gold relationships we’ve cultivated here at Ledyard High School.

High school has been a time where we have been able to create bonds with different people. Some of us have friendships with people we’ve known practically our entire lives. Some of us have friendships that have stayed strong since the beginning of high school. Some of us have friendships with teachers, who we wish could keep on teaching us because we know there’s so much more we could possibly learn from them. And some of us have newer friendships, with people we wish we could’ve met earlier. All these people, no matter which case, have had lasting influences on our lives. And whether these friendships fizzle out, or grow stronger, they will always have been important to us and will also stay with us through the memories. Whether we continue to have these people by our sides, or if it’s just through memories, they’re all the most precious, valuable, and irreplaceable things we can take from high school. Just about as precious as gold.

Bianca Planeta is the Vice President of both the National Honor Society and the Class of 2021 in addition to being the Secretary of Key Club. She studies dance, is an Ambassador Girl Scout, and is a varsity tennis player. Bianca will attend the University of Connecticut in the fall to study molecular biology.