COMMENCEMENT

This year’s commencement acknowledged both the classes of 2020 and 2021. Our commencement speaker, Rosemary Didear, graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University and joined Delphian staff in 1991 with her husband. She has held a variety of positions at the school, most notably serving as Headmistress for sixteen years. In 2015 she was asked by the board to establish the school’s Development Office. The following is an excerpt from her commencement speech.

I used to lead a Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities seminar. Looking over the experiences of the Classes of 2020 and ‘21 makes me think of the very first line in that book: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”. Yes, you might be the most unforgettable classes in Delphian history! You’ve had the excitement of spring break 2020, dancing down at the pond and doing activities with staff; you’ve also survived two-week dorm quarantines and choir singing with masks on. All that makes for great stories down the road!

Graduates, I admire each of you. You’ve shown a depth of understanding and competence in application well beyond the usual for a high school graduate. You’ve discovered your potential is limitless.

As you’re about to take off from the end of this runway, you each have a very good sense of WHO you are, and understand when you are being true to yourself... and when you aren’t. Challenges to integrity never stop — not at your age, and not at my age.

Once you’re off the Delphian runway and in the air, you’ll no longer be surrounded every day by the strong ethical agreements of this group and these peers, and that might be the biggest challenge you’ll face. BUT you do know what it feels like to stay true to yourself — and your own flight plan — and how to get back on it if you’ve wandered off course.

Delphian’s logo points of ethics, integrity, knowledge and leadership are SO much a part of you now that I had to wonder: What can I add to that?

So I scanned through my own life since high school, looking for what I learned after my own high school graduation that I could have used right at the beginning. Was there one piece of advice that would have been genuinely helpful?

Here’s what I came up with: live a life of adventure! I don’t mean frivolous or reckless adventure or one that serves only you, without taking every part of your life into account. After all, part of Delphian’s mission is that you would help bring positive change to the world. No, I’m talking about making opportunities for yourselves that challenge you at every turn.

At one point in my own young adult life, I came to a crossroads where I had a clear choiceof two radically different life paths. This was a tough decision, not one that was made overnight. But I did choose the more adventurous path. As in the famous Robert Frost poem, I took the one less traveled by, and that did make all the difference.

You will most definitely have to make MAJOR life choices of your own. But adventure can come in small daily packages too: the decision to participate instead of hold back; to explore new subjects in college; to find the unexpected through reaching out to strangers; to volunteer help in your community or serve on a nonprofit board when it might be easier to stay home.

Living a life of adventure can sound like living for thrills or inviting danger. For sure, doing something daring that you won’t later regret can be fun. I remember when we lived in California, my husband used to refer to my hikes as “Rosemary’s Death Marches.” And a defining moment of my life — though not at all death-defying — was climbing Mt. Whitney.

Those things were fun, but that’s not what I’m talking about. A LIFE of adventure is about seeing the world from eyes other than your own, walking in unfamiliar shoes.

I’ve had some unique travel adventures that I treasure. Learning about their marriage customs at dinner with tribal Africans or being invited home for the weekend by Scots on a Loch Lomond ferry. Experiencing first-hand how Cambodia feels thanks to its Buddhist culture, or enjoying the different perspectives of the North and South Vietnamese. Practicing English with a Russian class and hearing how they think Americans view Russians and having that dialogue. And everywhere, experiencing the instant friendships that form between travelers who have stepped for a time out of their usual routines.

But it was even more adventurous for my husband Dege and me — with an infant and toddler to care for, with no certain income, no cash reserves and a mortgage — to start our own business out of our home, defying every rule we’d heard. We took a big risk; but one that allowed us to see the business world up close and learn what it meant to deliver exceptional service. It was a personal expansion that proved invaluable later in my role as Delphian’s Headmistress.

When you and your parents chose the Delphian School, that already put you on a flight plan to adventure. This school is not the usual. And when you chose to graduate, your real adventure began.

But now you’ve made it into the air, flying into unexplored skies.

What I wish for all of you is this:

May the hard-won abilities you found here lead you into as yet undreamed-of adventure.