Good Morning Everyone,
Teachers, parents, families, friends, and most importantly, my fellow graduates. Wow. We actually made it. Somehow, after years of endless homework, forgotten pencils, missing assignments, and hearing the words “This will affect your grade” about a million times, we are finally graduating from 8th grade.
Honestly, we should all get a trophy just for surviving middle school. When you think about it, middle school is kind of like riding a roller coaster that someone built using random leftover parts. It’s bumpy, it’s unpredictable, and things could possibly get broken along the way.
Before I keep going, I want to apologize on behalf of our entire class to our teachers and custodians, for breaking the following things over our time at DCD: a door, a ceiling, a clock, a wall, a floor, pens, pencils, a cubby, a printer, a lamp, a table, multiple chairs, a milking stool, a whiteboard, and a window. Thank you for your patience. And to everyone else in the audience, please know that we weren’t left unsupervised… at least not most of the time. But that’s just what happens when the coaster hits a sharp turn. One minute you feel confident and amazing, just flying down the track, and the next minute you are panicking because you totally forgot there was a math test. But somehow, the ride held together, and here we are today.
When we first buckled into this ride back in 6th grade, I don’t think any of us realized how fast it would go. At first, it was just a slow, boring climb. We showed up, talked with friends, tried not to fall asleep during classes, and counted down the days until winter and summer breaks. But somewhere along the way, the coaster picked up serious speed. All those regular, everyday moments became core memories, and suddenly we were hitting loops and twists we never saw coming.
We had to learn how to deal with the sudden drops. For example:
We learned that if a teacher says, “The homework shouldn’t be too bad,” that’s a trap, especially when it comes to FHAO homework, and for those of you who don’t know what FHAO is, you’ll figure it out in 8th grade. We learned how the track works: the quietest classroom somehow becomes absolute chaos the exact second the teacher steps out for two seconds. We learned that MacBooks love to die right when you need them most. And we learned that no matter how many alarms you set, waking up early will always feel completely illegal.
But in between all the loops that made our stomachs turn, something cool happened. We actually grew up. Maybe not completely, I mean, most of us still laugh hysterically when someone falls off their chair. But we changed. We got more confident. We found friends to hold onto during the scary parts. We figured out who we are, and we learned how to keep our hands in the air even when things got way too crazy.
Middle school was definitely not a smooth ride. There were stressful days, incredibly awkward days, and days where we felt totally upside down and overwhelmed. There were moments when we thought we would fly right off the tracks trying to survive a huge project, a presentation, or that one test everyone was terrified of.
But every single sharp turn helped us handle the next one. And now, as we pull into the station, we are not the same little kids who queued up for this ride years ago. We are older. Wiser. Taller. Well… some of us, anyway. Today is about thanking the people who made sure this coaster didn’t derail.
First, our ride operators: our teachers. Seriously, teachers do so much more than just teach lessons. They are the ones checking our safety bars, encouraging us when we doubt ourselves, and staying patient when we ask dumb questions, even when the answer was literally written on the board the whole time. They deal with kids trying to use the bathroom during lunch just to escape cleanup duty, and kids forgetting their homework. And somehow, they still show up every day ready to help us pass.
So to all of our teachers: thank you for keeping us on the tracks, pushing us to do our best, and not giving up on us, even when we forgot our homework, our binders, and sometimes, our common sense.
We also owe everything to our families. Parents, grandparents, siblings, and guardians. Thank you for helping us through the whiplash of stressful nights, early mornings, and last-minute projects. Thank you for listening to us complain, and thank you for surviving our mood swings, which definitely deserves an award.
And now I want to talk about the people sharing the roller coaster car with us: our friends. Middle school friendships are different. These are the people who sat right next to us in the front row. The people who shared their snacks, and made us laugh so hard that we got in trouble for talking.
Years from now, we won’t remember every single homework assignment or quiz grade. But we will remember the people. We will remember the awesome highs of spirit weeks, school dances, and overnight field trips. We will remember the sudden drops of lunch table drama, and the pure panic of hearing, “Okay, everybody, pick a partner,” while you have a friend group of three and have to choose a person to sacrifice.
We will remember the best moments of all, where the ride paused and we got to hear the words: “School is canceled.” We grew up together on this track, and that is something really special.
As we get ready to step off this ride and head toward high school, I think it’s fair to admit that most of us are a little stressed. High school looks massive. It has taller hills, faster drops, and everyone keeps talking about GPA, sports, clubs, and our entire future. It can feel really scary.
But if this crazy middle school coaster taught us anything, it’s that we can handle the twists. We already survived group projects. We survived our finals. We can definitely survive high school.
This next ride will bring new challenges, but it will also bring awesome new loops. New friends. New experiences. A chance to see what more we can do. Some of us want to be athletes, some artists, musicians, or doctors. Some of us still have absolutely no clue what we want to do, and honestly, that is totally fine. We don’t need to have our whole lives figured out at thirteen or fourteen years old. Right now, our job is just to enjoy the ride, keep learning, and believe in ourselves.
As we move forward, let’s remember a few things: Be kind to your fellow passengers, you never know when someone is feeling stressed. Work hard, even when the climb is steep. Don’t be afraid to mess up, sometimes failing teaches you way more than staying safely strapped in ever could. And most importantly, don’t be afraid to just be yourself. Middle school tries to force everyone to act exactly the same, but the truth is, the people who stand out are the ones who change things.
As we leave this chapter behind, we should be proud of ourselves. Not because it was a perfect, smooth ride, but because we didn’t quit. We held on, we got better, we survived sentence diagraming, and we made it to the station together.
One day, years from now, when we start having knee and back pain, we will look back at this middle school coaster and laugh. We will laugh about the awkward moments and the times we thought one bad grade would ruin our entire lives. And we will realize that this ride wasn’t just about surviving the drops, it was about learning how to fly.
To my fellow graduates, I am so proud of us. Some of our tracks were easy, some were incredibly hard, but every single one of us worked to reach this moment. The brakes are squeaking, the safety bars are lifting, and the ride is officially over. Look at us. We made it.
Congratulations, Class of 2026. Let’s go get in line for the next ride! Thank you, and good luck, everyone!
