Bristol Eastern held their graduation Wednesday on a gorgeous evening outside on the athletic grounds. Fiona Gallagher was the Valedictorian and Annette Grabowski was the Salutatorian of the Class of 2022.

Gallagher delivered the following as her Valedictory speech.

Good evening friends, family, faculty, and graduates. I want to congratulate all of my classmates for being here tonight. Graduating high school is no easy feat, and you should be proud of yourselves. It’s been a wild four years, having to navigate through online learning and isolation on top of the many regular struggles of teenage-dom. But you have all accomplished amazing things and worked so hard to get to this point in your journey, and for that I applaud you.
A large part of my journey began right here four years ago, sitting in Mr. Valle’s physical science class. We were racing homemade magnet trains down a track, and I just couldn’t get mine right. I kept putting the magnet on the wrong side, or the train would slip off the rails, and I just could not get that train to go down the track. So I cried. I actually cried in school quite a bit my freshman year; if I got a bad grade on a test, I didn’t know what to write for an important essay, or if I got lost on the way to class. Back then it felt like every time I messed up, the world was going to end.

Michelle Obama says that “Failure is a part of the process. You just learn to pick yourself back up.” During my time here at BE I have learned more and more how true that is. Throughout high school, and life in general, you are destined to make a few mistakes. But that doesn’t make you any less of a person, or any worse off. If anything, it leaves you better prepared for future challenges; learning from your mistakes and being able to accept failures and grow from them are skills that are going to help you succeed, much past high school. It is so much easier to bounce back from your mistakes when you are surrounded by support, like I have been lucky enough to experience from all of you these last four years.

So, as you continue on your journey, try to find the people who love you regardless of your failures, and try to take every bad day as an opportunity to do better tomorrow. You have all made it so far and I know you will do great things with everything you have learned. Thank you, and congratulations.

The Poet Laureate for the class of ’22, Alyssa Gonzales, recited her work, “The Day.”

The day is finally here.
The day of dreaded excitement and agonizing pride.

The day we would have spent hours upon hours stressing before the relief of a 10 foot walk.

I can’t believe that the day is here.

Today I beg to join us now haunting above to welcome our success would be to close the biggest part of our lives thus far.

The day is here and I can no longer escape it – We’re growing up.

As soon as I accept this paper and shake their hands and say my final goodbyes, it will be done here, but I’m so close to my greatest accomplishment.

And it is taking everything out of me not to rip off my cap right now, throw it in the air and scream, “ I did it mom and dad, gram and pa, my brothers, my sisters- I finally did it!”

The day will end and I will rest easily thinking about it all.

To walk these halls again would be to reminisce on old times and to remember life at 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18.

Here are some photos from the ceremony.