Old Fogie Bursting with Pride

Senior Graduation Oration Speech 2005

(from my high school's website)

Robin Barron, class of 2005

Buenos días, clase de dos mil cinco. Soy Robin Barron, y he sido una estudiante por cuatro años en NMH. Soy de Halifax, Vermont, un pueblito al noroeste de aqui. Me siento honrada de hablar ante ustedes en ésta, vuestra última reunión en NMH.

Good morning, class of 2005! I am Robin Barron, and I am a four year senior here at Northfield Mount Hermon. I come from Halifax, Vermont, a tiny town just northwest of here. This is your last “required meeting,” and I am honored to be one of your last guest speakers.

When I arrived for my freshman year, I traveled only 45 minutes to get to NMH. As a day student, I went back home every night. That year, I was amazed to hear how long people had traveled to get here. 24 hours? On a plane? I didn’t know that it took that long to fly to any place! I had no idea that during four years here I would meet someone from Uzbekistan, learn to speak Spanish, and be inspired by activist Kimmie Weeks’ story of working for the rights and welfare of the world’s children.

It didn’t take me long to find out that being at NMH was completely different from being at home. NMH was not just a New England Prep school. It was a miniature world, with students from multiple religions, languages, and cultures.

When did I figure this out? Certainly not at that infamous five-hour diversity meeting our freshman year. I started to notice it when I awoke from my little white Vermont world and began to feel connected to the outside world through my new international friends. It was triggered by the smell of foreign foods that filled the lounge after study hall. It caught my ear in the lilting accent of a newfound Ukrainian friend. It captured my attention in an explanation of how to use chopsticks at the Chinese banquet. Bit by bit, I started to realize that, at NMH, I could expand my horizons without ever leaving campus.

Eventually, though, I wanted to get out. I questioned the authenticity of this “diversity.” Were these cross-cultural experiences I was having here real, or were they forced by circumstance? Then, in my junior year, I got the opportunity to go on a term abroad and live with a family in the Dominican Republic for two months.

There’s something about being completely immersed in another culture that brings out a stronger side of you. Maybe you feel freer, or maybe you feel as if you need to be louder and firmer to be understood by all the locals. Whatever the case, being the only white person in a large city changes your perspective. It is especially eye-opening for a middle-class white American to suddenly be in the minority. It is important to feel that, and to realize that you can’t be the same person or do the same things that you do at home. You have to change. You have to adapt. You have to be confused.

I went to the Dominican Republic knowing a fair amount of Spanish, but the first few weeks there were difficult. At NMH, I could talk on and on in my Spanish 2 class about my family tree, my favorite subject in school, or my best friend, just as I had learned from my textbook. But when it came to following the rapid and slang-filled conversations of Dominican teenagers, I was lost. I had so much to learn.

Soon, I became almost fluent in Spanish. In the Dominican Republic, unrestrained by the pressures of our society that I often feel here, I adapted to their culture and found my place within its confines. There I was, a glowing white Vermont farm girl, living in the city of San Cristóbal. So many things were new and different for me—and that’s what was so exciting about it all.

When I returned to NMH, I realized that I could be that same outgoing person in our NMH culture too. I came back from the Dominican Republic filled with a renewed sense of purpose and energy. I had felt so alive every day in the Caribbean sunshine, and I never wanted to let that fade, especially when the New England weather was cold and gray and miserable. Living, speaking, and even dreaming in a foreign language for two months had truly brought me to understand it. Suddenly, fill-in-the-blank Spanish grammar exercises were much easier, and reading the poetry of Gabriel Garcia Marquez was much more enjoyable.

However, as you all know, you don’t have to go to another country to be immersed. I went to SoulFest last year and felt like the only white girl there. I sometimes realize on the bus that I’m surrounded by a group of Chinese students and that I have no idea what they’re saying. And this is ok. Because out in the world you don’t always understand what’s going on around you. You’re not always in the majority. You’re not always comfortable. And that’s ok.

There are so many ways, big and small, noticed and unnoticed, in which having international and diverse groups of students here affects the way we all learn. You can understand why birth control is no simple issue in Afghanistan when a classmate who has lived there explains to you the importance of large families in Afghan culture. It’s fun to learn German songs in concert choir and be laughed at by the native Germans for your awful pronunciation. You understand so much more about Buddhism when there are actually Buddhist students in the class who can talk about how they practice Buddhism and what the Eight-fold path means for them.

Feeling this around me, every day, I am reminded that there is life outside of NMH, but that all those lives—all those experiences, cultures, religions, languages—all come together here. This is not to say that we all acknowledge, appreciate, or dwell on the diversity we have. However, no one can deny that here, in our beautiful but isolated New England prep school, we have a kind of cultural immersion.

Maybe NMH is your first time living away from home, your first time living in America and speaking English, or the first time you heard Thai being spoken. Maybe NMH was the first place you met someone from another country. Or maybe you tried tostones at the Latin American table at the International Carnival and can’t wait to eat more.

NMH is a little slice of the world, and your time here has started you on your way toward getting the whole pie. Don’t let your exploration, your adventuring, or your learning stop here. It’s time to venture outside the wonderfully protective walls of NMH. It’s time to go and be the only white in a country of black people, the only Muslim in a country of Christians, the only liberal in a conference of conservatives. Put yourself in that new place to explore, to learn, and to experience. Put yourself in that place to enjoy and to live.

Traveling to new places is about finding yourself surrounded by the unexpected, and about letting that unexpectedness take you along for the ride. You probably assumed that I would begin my speech in English, but I didn’t. I thought that everyone would understand me when I arrived in the Dominican Republic, but they didn’t. I thought that my four years here at NMH would be just a more demanding high-school education—but it wasn’t. Ha sido mucho mas que eso. It has been so much more than that.