Class of 2024 Co-Valedictorian Speech

6/4/2024

Abigail Quesnell, DSHA '24

Abigail Quesnell, DSHA '24, is co-valedictorian this year along with Kate Krueger, DSHA '24. Abigail will attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall where she plans to study electrical engineering. You can watch her remarks to the class of 2024 here.

Congratulations Class of 2024! I am incredibly honored and grateful to have this opportunity to speak before you on graduation day. We’ve come a long way from freshman year and now express the bittersweet farewell to friends we’ve made on our journeys and to our beloved high school. Our experiences at DSHA have led us to explore who we are and what path we want to pursue.

I want to express my gratitude to all the people who have gotten us to this moment. Thank you, parents, grandparents, and family members. You are the ones who picked us up when we fell down. You support us every day through both our victories and struggles.

Thank you, teachers, staff, administrators, and coaches. You made our schooling at DSHA not only possible but exceptional. You pushed us when we couldn’t go any further, believed in us when we didn’t believe in ourselves and taught us even when we were in pajamas, half-asleep on a Teams call.

Thank you, Sisters of the Divine Savior, who sponsor DSHA. Your mission to care for the poor and vulnerable sets an example to us students of selflessness and service. Your support of our school, education, and spiritual growth is deeply appreciated.

And finally, class of 2024, thank you for being great friends, classmates, and teammates. Our community and friendship are what I and all of us should treasure as we step into the future. Even as we part our separate ways, we are forever intertwined.

Our story together began freshman year when graduation seemed unreachable. We were masked and only in school twice a week. I am genuinely amazed that we had friends at that time. Even so, each of us was struggling to figure out who we were and who we wanted to become. Teachers, I applaud you for the heroic patience you displayed with our class this first year.

Sophomore year was a year of firsts: Homecoming, AirBand, and Dash-a-Thon. This was our first time coming together as a class and a community.

Junior year brought new plaid skirts, early lunchtime, and a long-awaited prom. This was the year friendships deepened, we truly experienced the DSHA community, and we developed a better sense of our potential future paths.

And here we are in our final year, the year we were waiting for. We wanted Dash-a-Thon spirit patrol, college decisions, and graduation. Now that these moments have passed us by, we close the book on our high school selves and start a new chapter in our lives as we pursue our next vocation. At the end of every story comes a fresh start.

As we forge our own individual paths and work towards creating a better world, it is important that we stay true to ourselves and our beliefs. The world likes to tell us how we should act, what we should look like, and who we should be, and these messages are always contradicting. They tell us, be quieter, or be louder. Be ambitious but live simply. Be agreeable but hold your ground. Be normal but special. Optimistic but realistic. They say, just be the best you can be, but then tell us, you aren’t good enough.

The truth is, you know yourself, even when you don’t feel like you do. You know yourself better than the rest of the world. Listen to others’ opinions and advice. Surround yourself with kind and knowledgeable people. Many times, they are helpful and are looking out for you; however, be sure to listen to your own heart and don’t let the world change what’s great about you.

Grow, change, and yes, be your best self, but don’t let society define who you are. Hold true to your beliefs and use your unique passions to provide service to others around you and make an impact for the better.

So, wherever your future path leads you, “Let your smile change the world, but don't let the world change your smile” (Unknown).

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