Joseph Pinto

Good afternoon, all. Thank you for coming out this beautiful Friday to celebrate the amazing Tower Hill School Class of 2019! We are a very special class--at least I think we are? I suppose if we really wanted to find out we would have to run an experiment, and after detailed observations and meticulous data collection, the end result would show that, well, specialness is all relative. Our class has been focused, driven, and respectable in many cases, yet sitcom-worthy in others. As the president of the student body, I have had a unique view of all of the highs, lows, laughs, trials, and tribulations of our class, and I thought, on this ceremonious occasion, I would share some with you.

 

Let’s start by talking about Freud day in Modern European history, a class I took last year. Freud was the philosopher of the Age of Anxiety--the period between the world wars--thanks to his psychoanalytic ideas. But did you know that Freud also illuminated various psychosexual relationships inherent in all people, such as the relationship between a teacher and a student? I didn’t know that. Until, you know, my teacher taught it. To me, a student. I think the only thing more uncomfortable would be if I was taught about the Oedipus complex in English class while my parents were visiting.

 

Then there are the less positive things that I have seen as president. A personal experience I’d like to share--which I think we all could have related to at some point this past year--occurred in the midst of the second quarter. I had an English paper on Orwell’s 1984 due the next day. I have this weird habit of pushing off work--particularly English papers--until right before they are due. I think there might be a word for that. On this night, I was about half-way through my paper when I realized my evidence was disproving my thesis. After realizing I would have to completely redo this paper (mind you, it was about 11:00 pm at this point), I fell into a heap and succumbed to tears. It was a shame, too. If I had waited but three weeks, when the college application deadlines were looming, midterms were happening, my mom was reminding me of the looming college application deadline, student government duties were piling up, and my dad was reminding me of the looming college application deadline, I could have gotten all my crying out in one night! It’s funny though: for all of us, everything worked out. Life has a way of restoring vitality after systematically squeezing it out of you for four months. What proof do I have? We are all here. We have made it.

 

I’m very much a math and science guy, and this year I took a physics course. In this course I learned all about forces: the laws governing them, ways to apply them, et cetera. There’s a concept called “net force,” which, when applied to, say, a block, governs the direction the block slides. If there is a net force to the right, for example, the block will accelerate to the right. Depending on how you frame the problem, you can have a positive or negative net force. Let’s take this scientific idea and apply it to our time at Tower Hill. One way to judge our time here is certainly to look at specific moments that elicit emotions, as we just did. These moments don’t tell the whole story, however. What we need are moments that illustrate our growth over time. As it happens, there is one moment that splendidly describes our growth as a class.

 

In March, the senior class went on a trip to New York City. We ascended a large tower, bowled, observed zoo animals, gazed confusedly at the gigantic black and gray Rothko at the Met. The conclusion of our night was at Broadway, at the show Mean Girls. Mean Girls tells the tale of Cady Heron, a girl raised in Africa, thrust into an American high school. She is a superb math student who develops a crush on the boy in front of her. She ascends the ranks of popularity at the high school, dethrones the queen bee, and then watches as the ground crumbles beneath her into total chaos. Not very realistic, as the climax featured students fighting each other as if they were jungle animals. At the end, however, once Cady has had her moment of critical self-reflection, she enters a math competition and is faced, for the championship, with a question about limits. Now, for the coup de grâce of this long-winded summary of Mean Girls. The first time I watched the film, I was in the seventh grade, and the problem on the board seemed to be in hieroglyphics. Seeing the problem again, though, I realized it could be easily solved using a trick I’d learned in calculus class for solving tough limits: L’Hospital’s Rule. Five years after first seeing Mean Girls, I, too, could triumphantly declare that the limit did not exist!

 

I tell you this story because that moment illustrates perfectly our progression at Tower Hill. The days of school may pass seemingly without change, so we don’t realize that we are taking small steps toward improvement each day. But, every small fact, every difficult social situation, every leadership experience, has molded us into people that our ninth grade selves could only have dreamed of becoming. Only when we look back do we realize how much progress we have really made.

 

This progress of mind, character, and soul at Tower Hill certainly seems to be a net positive. But we can take it a step further, and link it to our happiness. My favorite author is the historian Will Durant. In his book The Story of Philosophy he writes: “Happiness, … lies rather in achievement than in possession or satiation.” On each of our unique paths, Tower Hill has prepared us to achieve, and we’ve already begun. No limits exist.

 

I’ll close now, for though I enjoy the sound of my voice, it is an acquired taste. To the parents, grandparents, siblings, fun uncles, friends: thank you for listening to me and for supporting us through these years. To the student body: thank you for putting up with my odd music selections throughout the year, my questionable senior speech puns, and my rapidly gesticulating hands. To our faculty: thank you for teaching us not just academic principles, but the skills to tackle any situation in the future. To our coaches: thank you for teaching us to be passionate yet kind. Most importantly, thank you to the Class of 2019. It has been a long journey; for some, 14 years, for others, 2. But together, we have overcome adversity, pushed our limits, and come out thriving. We have bright futures, and beautiful music before us.

 

Thank you.