Curtis WestbayTrimester 2 is over.
This means that many of our seniors are not taking classes anymore. Most are starting an independent project that they’ll do for the next two and a half months. Personally, I am the faculty adviser to one student, who is spending the next term studying a modern language in a self-designed immersive setting. Before COVID, she might have traveled to a place where immersion would not be optional. During this challenging time, however, she has to be immensely disciplined and focused to create an immersive environment from her own home. I contend that the latter is much more difficult— it requires commitment and planning that would be unfair to expect of a teenager.
But our students are no ordinary teenagers.
The Class of 2022 obviously holds a special distinction, being the first graduating class from BASIS International School Park Lane Harbour. When I reflect on my time with them, I am really impressed by how they’ve met challenges head on without any template to work from. No graduating class from our school will ever again have to suffer this lack of an exemplar. This mere fact alone produces a high degree of difficulty for every accomplishment that the Class of 2022 has collectively earned.
Then, of course, these students are applying to colleges from mainland China. It doesn’t get more challenging than that in international admission in the year 2022. Nevertheless, they’ve already earned incredible offers of admission. In a few weeks, we will know for certain the status of just about all of our students’ college applications. We look forward to sharing the good news about the schools that have extended to our students offers of admission. Even now, not knowing all of the offers, it’s safe to say that the Class of 2022 has already earned admission to some of the most selective, most prestigious institutions of higher education in the world. Here again, colleges didn’t have any sort of institutional reputation as a context for our students. For the overwhelming majority of high schools, college application readers know more or less what they’re getting in a graduate based on the performance of students who have come from there before. For our Class of 2022, the offers they’ve earned have come from their hard work alone.
We have been hard on them in their time at our school, to set the example for those that follow them. They were asked to set the tone for a student body academically, socially, as leaders, and as paragons of this community’s values. They haven’t been perfect— no one ever is— but the Class of 2022 has met that charge. As they go into this project term and finish their final courses at BIPH, I want to take the opportunity to say thank you to the 54 members of the Class of 2022. The road to this point has been tough, and things will only get tougher from here. Still, if there’s anyone who exemplifies resilience and courage in the face of unknown challenges, it’s the Class of 2022.
Time has a way of sneaking up on you when you work in a school. Here we are, it’s almost April. It’s hard to believe that seven months have already passed since we began this school year. It’s even harder to believe that this is my tenth year at a BASIS school. The Roman author Vergil said it succinctly: tempus fugit— “time is fleeting.”
So, before time gets away from me and these incredible students are gone, let me be among the first to say: congratulations, BIPH Class of 2022. It’s never easy being the first, but you did it— with persistence, with tenacity, with brilliance, with creativity, with patience. You are inimitable, though students will try to match your excellence for years to come. We will never forget our incredible, pioneering, trailblazing inaugural graduating class. We can’t wait to see where you go from here.
If you see a senior, remember to tell them congratulations and thank you.