Salutatorian address

I am Madison Grzanna and I am honored to be standing in front of you today as the salutatorian of the Rib Lake High School graduating class of 2025. Thank you for all of those attending today, whether you are a parent, grandparent, sibling, teacher, or friend. We are very pleased to have you join us on this special evening.

Just yesterday I attended my younger cousin’s kindergarten graduation and it brought me back to the memories of where our class had started. Some of us are still sitting up in these chairs fidgeting with the tassels on our caps unsure of their next step, while others are focused and prepared for the end game. And it made me think of what we wanted to be then and how our plans have changed to what we want to be now. I found it interesting to sit down and talk with the kindergarten class this year and found how different their interests are compared to how ours were at that same age.

Where we wanted to be teachers, firefighters, nurses, and police officers, while they want to be youtubers, gamers, or rockstars. How times have changed. Even the sizes of our caps and gowns that we wore then to what size we are wearing today has changed. When we wore the smaller version of the caps and gowns we are wearing today we never thought we would grow to be the class that we are today.

Saying that, I would like to share a little bit about our class that helped us to gain the notorious nickname of, “that class.” Well we started off grade school without this name, we were always the “excelling” kids. Of course we always had a few slip ups in our younger years like the boys losing their hat privileges because they were misbehaving or someone getting sent to the office they got their head stuck in a chair. But those were just minor incidents. Then we hit middle school and it all went downhill from there. Middle school can change kids pretty quickly. Although, we were still doing okay without the name of “that class” in sixth grade. Going into seventh grade was the COVID year and I think our teachers were wondering what had happened to our whole class because only two of us showed up to the zoom meetings. Then the next thing we knew, eighth grade hit and we were separated into two classrooms. So lunch was the only time we got to all be together. And because of all that time apart we made up for it with a food fight at lunch or Mr.Wudi needing to yell at us to just “BE CIVILIZED.” From then on we have definitely been, “that class.” This was a big time of change, yet when we got to high school it became worse. Soon enough we were having fist fights in the hallways or something else full of destruction. And as a result we are still “that class.” But through all of that we did graduate. We made it. This is an exciting milestone.

From here, every one of us has a different end goal and we will all go in different directions. Some of us may be going into the workforce, going off to college, or something else. Some of us this may be our last graduation and others this may be one of many more to come. But as my grandpa always told my grandma who told us (wait…what do you always say grandpa?), “It takes all kinds of people with different interests to make the world keep going around.” So, as we all venture into the next chapters of our lives, I would like to remind each and every one of you to be proud of how far you have come and I wish everyone the best of luck for their future to come. — Madison Grzanna