State High School Graduation Essay

Good evening to all my fellow peers, teachers, family, friends & the general community. I’d like to welcome you all to the Marsden State High school graduation ceremony of 2014. My name is Patrick Oboma and I'm more than honoured to have been selected to give this years valedictorian speech. My philosophy in life is to "See great things, be grateful, and achieve greatness."

Body 1: While being a student at State High, I went through many ups and downs. I have met people who brought me up and people that brought me down. Because of this, I realised never to give up on myself, and because of this, there were moments where I failed to achieve my goals or things that didn't go as well as I wanted it to be. However, I would try again and again

Filled with block exams, sports, studying, block exams, 6 assignments crammed into 2 weeks, sports blocks exams, unrealistic expectations, sleepless nights, and block exams.

But other than that, yeah, year 12 has been one of the best years of my life so far. I’ve learned a lot about myself and my peers this year.

As many of you probably don’t know, I come from Uganda. Life was pretty tough; you never know what are over horizon whether it would be rebels fighting, working and breaking sweat every day in the farms or families struggling to find money to pay off their children’s school fees. You wouldn’t understand the struggle that parents back there go through to them so little dollars to pay for their child’s school and often because of this many students do not go off to University or High School because there is no money to support that child. None of you know the struggles that I’ve been through but yeah the struggle is too damn real. Sometimes you just feel like wanting to be that patch of water on the sand banks taking a break from reality. But life goes on and you got to keep battling through those thick muddy dirty waters and find ways to avoid hitting those hard rocks.

Body 2

Exactly 8 years ago my life completely changed. That was when my family moved into Australia. Ever since we got off the plane I see smiles that I didn’t usually see back in Africa, everybody seemed to be so nice and friendly. And I'm starting to like this river that I’m flowing in, flowing smoothly and gently down the stream. Those bright white teeth showing are the beautiful flowers growing on the side of the rivers with all seven colours of the rainbow and glazing above those beautiful blooming