Zhao, Park lead 143 SSHS graduates

Saipan Southern High School graduated about 143 seniors Tuesday afternoon, with the graduating class choosing the theme “A thousand memories on the road” to acknowledge their time spent as friends and classmates during their four years of high school.

The theme was taken from a song called Home, which the students also sang during the ceremony.

Yijia Zhao was named the valedictorian of the graduating class.

The salutatorian, or as he joked in his speech, “first place loser,” was Jun Seo Allen Park.

Following the top two students were Emily Dewitt, Joann Bandales, Hyun Bin Hwang, Katrina Punzulan, Ye Young Kim, Sarah Kim, Jin Pyo Jeon, and Yvonne Indalecio.

Tuesday’s keynote speaker was Lt. Gov. Ralph Torres, who reminded students that this was their “last day of class.”

“That’s it, pancit,” he said.

“But your days of learning are not done, “ he added. “Your responsibility to learn” continues in work, college, and in relationships, he said.

Despite being called “young, naïve, or inexperienced,” there is “no measurement for where you can go,” Torres said, noting that he was also called those things during his run for lieutenant governor.

Calling his chances of delivering their keynote address as a lieutenant governor “unlikely,” Torres described growing up with a mother who worked two jobs with a family of five boys who lived in one small room.

He said when he moved to the U.S mainland at age 12, he was shorter, darker, and admitted he was bullied.

“Words matter,” he said. But “for those people who tell you, you can’t do something,” give them four words, he said, “I can do this.”

The seniors then echoed the governor, saying, “I can do this” as a crowd. They then turned to each other and said, “You can do this” together.

Education leaders also commended the students getting through their four years in high school.

“Let your success serve as an inspiration for students who come after…Let your drive” be “the means to provide opportunities for others,” Board of Education chair Herman T. Guerrero said.

He told the seniors they were entering a “vastly new journey” and wished them well.

Education Commissioner Dr. Rita Sablan urged students to “cherish what has been given to you.”

“Saipan is going to be here and the CNMI is going to be here waiting for you, because we know you can come back” and give to your community, she said.

The senior’s class song, Home, was a 2014 song by Naughty Boy. It goes: “It’s been a good year, will be a long day, Before we lay our heads down to rest, and if those tears come rolling down, I’ll pull you close to me, and tell you we’ll be back there again. Won’t be a long time, won’t be a long time…’Till we get back home.”