With eight days of school left and an unwritten graduation speech looming over my head, I harbored lingering feelings of frustration as I wandered the halls at this year’s Evening of the Arts, our school’s Fine and Performing Arts show. And then came the epiphany. I saw Phoebe Kelleher’s photographs of the people and wildlife of Africa; I saw Lonni Phillips’s captivating portraits; I read Ashley Drake’s witty captions, and I heard Maggie Howard sing her deeply resonant Animal Song. My realization was this: what matters is not where you fit into your high school community, but how you transcend it. I asked the senior class if they had anything to share on thesubject; you will hear their commentswhich  are woven into this speech.

As Savannah Lawson once said: “Our school has a little bit of everything.” Look at our tennis team, which swept their division 8 and 0, or our newspaper and photography students who win prestigious awards from NESPA and Boston Globe Scholastic Arts Awards every year. Many of my fellow seniors were offered admission to some of the most competitive schools in the country. How about the athletes who represented our school this year in the Massachusetts Special Olympics, or our theatre department that was accepted to perform at the largest theatre festival in the world?

While these are all outstanding accomplishments, they represent only one side of our high school experience. I can’t ignore the difficulties we’ve faced as a class, as a team, staff, or cast, and as individuals. This is not the time or place to dwell on those struggles. I mention them only to show how far we’ve come already in transcending whatever difficulties we’ve faced.

This is the environment we’ve grown up in. Boundaries are pushed; mistakes are made and forgiven; students are treated as individuals; we party; we dance; we create things; we sometimes miss our mark; we go with our guts and stick to our guns, for better and forworse. And we grow.

Most Island kids find a way to make a splash here in one way or another, whether it be through their art, writing, athletics, academics or heated debates. Sarah Hall observed how “each individual at our school has an impact on the others.” She noted that, though “we all might disagree on little things, we are all one community and we will stick together through the good and the bad.” I would agree and add that having been stuck together through these good and bad times, it is no easy task to break free from our little nest ofsecurity. Caitlyn Clark expressed a concern that many share: “We’ll never experience or find the same closely knit community like the one we’ve created together over the past 12 or 13 years of school.”

To those, including myself, who feel at all apprehensive about leaving the security we’ve known, I propose a challenge: How far can yougo? Who are you beyond the edges of thisIsland? How much can you stray from your comfort zone, stretch your limits, change your perspective, and all the while, maintain your roots here?

Alex Roan reminds us that, “Even though we are leaving now, we will be back to this place that we have all loved.” So I challenge you to get lost, to feel afraid, forget what you’ve learned here, and find something new that you love. Leave your high school selfbehind. Take only what you absolutelyneed. Because if you are curious and brave enough to find things that you are passionate about, you will discover new communities as close or closer than the one you have built in highschool; you will know yourself better than y ou do now, and you will go farther than you ever thought you could because you are no longer bound by your roots, you are grounded by them.

Instead of going straight to college, I will travel to Portugal for two months to study Portuguese and then to Israel to pursue modern dance and ballet. I’m a little bit terrified. I must have taken hundreds of tests at school and none of them has prepared me for this. Whether you are choosing to stay here, move off-Island, go to college, or take a gap year, don’t just do what you’ve done in high school — whatever that may be. Greyson Bowker believes that “each one of us is going to leave a big footprint on this world.” I say, the only thing that can stop us now is what we allow to hinderus. This is your chance to emerge, to explore, to escape. If there is one wish I have for all of you, it is to do something that your high school self wouldn’t dare to do. For me, this means traveling, learning a language, and pursuing intense dancetraining. What will it mean for you?

Tessa Permar is salutatorian for the class of 2010. Following her travels, she will attend Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.