On Wednesday, June 5, Year 13 students from Yew Chung International School of Beijing (YCIS Beijing) marked the end of their secondary education at the school’s auditorium. Wearing mortarboard caps and black robes with a red and blue trim, 39 seniors proceeded into the room. They were preceded by colorfully-dressed Co-Principals Christine Xu and Wayne Richardson, Assistant Director Winnie Cheng, and Superintendent Tom Ulmet.
The graduating class represented 14 nationalities, including the UK, the US, China, South Korea, Italy and Canada. They have been accepted to programs ranging from bio-engineering and architecture to art history, economics, computer science, mathematics, marketing, creative writing, graphic design, music composition, social technology, and beyond.
Universities that the graduates are considering or have been accepted to include Cambridge, Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, University of Toronto, Yonsei University, New York University, and Imperial College London.
After a welcome by Student Executive Council Members Phoebe Woo and Paul Girard, the ceremony began with a message from Assistant Director Winnie Cheng. After the presentation of diplomas and subject awards from several teachers, graduating students Yejin Ham and Ahhyeon Yoo launched into a duet of “Someone Like You” by Adele.
One of the highlights of the ceremony was a speech by YCIS Beijing alumni Eugene Ling (Class of 2011), who is currently studying at the Haas School of business at the University of California, Berkeley.
He admitted to being afraid when he first got to university, comparing his graduating class of 31 students to the 6,000 in his year alone at UC Berkeley. However, Ling credited his years at YCIS Beijing as having helped him be “unafraid to explore”:
I have befriended people from all different backgrounds (…) I have joined a dragon boat team that competed in California, Hong Kong and Canada even though I had no idea what I was doing half of the time. I was also featured on the front cover of the San Francisco chronicle for being half naked at football games. I also joined a brotherhood in America’s oldest fraternity.
“College is what you make of it,” he continued, urging the current graduating class to get over their fears. He ended with an entreaty to never forget their parents or their teachers at YCIS Beijing.
After Ling’s speech, graduating student Christopher Sim (who is planning to study music composition after military service in Singapore) played a stirring rendition of Liebestraum No. 3 in A-flat Major. Eyes shut with a slight smile on his face, Sim bowed and swayed with the music as he played the piece.
The second major event was graduating student Michelle Lam’s valedictorian speech. Lam is 18 years old and from Hong Kong; she attended YCIS Beijing for four years and is planning to study at either the University of Hong Kong or Boston University. To read her speech in full, scroll to the bottom of the post.
She summarized her time at YCIS Beijing with one word: “transition.” Four years ago, Lam arrived at the school as a young girl with poor English. She shared with the audience a Chinese saying that her mother used to quote: 宝剑锋从磨砺出，梅花香自苦寒来(“Good honing gives a sharp edge to a sword; bitter cold adds keen fragrance to plum blossom.”) In other words, adversity makes one better.
Lam extended the concept of “transition” to the entire graduating class. She cited the challenge of the IB program: “This is a sting that kept us until 2am in the morning to study for a test; this is a sting that filled our weekends with creativity, action and service. But this is also a sting that offset our growth in the past two years, which really made our high school experience to excel.”
Lam congratulated her fellow graduates on finishing high school, and ended with a quote by Dr. Seuss:
“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed.
You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest."
After her speech, the YCIS Senior Band kicked into “A Farewell Medley” with snippets of Oasis, Nirvana, and other rock bands that had parents clapping along with the music.
The ceremony concluded with parting words from Ulmet, Xu, and Richardson, and a singing of YCIS Beijing’s school hymn. After taking some photos in the auditorium, graduates, parents, and faculty members boarded a bus for a celebration luncheon at the Hilton Beijing.
For more photos, check out our online gallery.
Michelle Lam’s Valedictorian Speech:
Good morning honorable guests, parents, teachers and fellow students. I am Michelle Lam from Year 13, and it’s my greatest honor to stand here today and represent the class of 2013 graduates.
I have waited for this moment the day I stepped into Yew Chung, the moment of graduation, the time when we can finally look back and honor the endeavors in the past two years. It was long and short. Long because of all the coursework, EE, endless CAS reflections and all the other little pratfalls that hit us in high school; short because of the lifelong friendships, the lasting memories, and the adventures we set foot on with a curious and courageous heart.
If I have to summarize my years here with a word, I would say “transition.” When I was a naive little girl, my mother always told me “宝剑锋从磨砺出，梅花香自苦寒来,”which means “Good honing gives a sharp edge to a sword; bitter cold adds keen fragrance to plum blossom.” In my years here at Yew Chung, I have found myself exemplifying this motto every single day, striving to achieve my goals with tiny yet solid improvement each day.
I recall the day I first came to Yew Chung, with a number of mixed emotions. On one hand I was fascinated by the diversity, and the unfamiliar freedom in choosing my own classes, yet on the other hand I was scared, trying with my poor English to figure out where our next class was, and looking generally clueless to all the upper classmen.
My first class was science taught by Dr. Sirimanne, and I was criticized by her on that very first class for talking, while in truth I was making an effort to get a grip of what she was saying – an effort that proved ruthlessly hard for me with her adorable accent and my detestably limited vocabulary.
So as you can probably tell, the first year here didn’t go quite as well as I expected. It was not easy to accomplish my goal and catch up in the past few years, but there is no denying my work was worth it. Along the way I have participated in the school orchestra, sports teams and various projects that helped me form invaluable bonds with friends. Though at high school, our goal was the diploma we will receive, but the journey to get that diploma is just as important, if not more, than the diploma itself.
And I think this word “transition” applies to the entire class of 2013, we used to receive consolation from the upperclassmen of previous years – that IB is not a killer, but we hit our heads hard on the facts when we met face to face with the "sting" of IB. This is a sting that kept us until 2am in the morning to study for a test; this is a sting that filled our weekends with creativity, action and service. But this is also a sting that offset our growth in the past two years, which really made our high school experience to excel.
In this progress, we survived with a huge debt of gratitude to our teachers and parents. On the behalf of my classmate, I would like to sincerely thank the amazing teachers we have. Thank you for so selflessly sharing your time and knowledge with us. You took the time to explain assignments, sometimes repeatedly because we weren’t paying attention. You put in the effort to make lessons more interesting so we wouldn’t just tune out. You set the bar high and challenged us to live up to it.
To our parents, thank you for supporting us in more ways than it’s possible to count. You were always there when we had complaints or stress. You tolerated our daily dramas, and give us enough space to learn how to work things out for ourselves. You hide your worries well when we anxiously waited for university offers, and everything you do prepared us for a better future.
And now is the time for bigger dreams and goals than ever. Graduation is a time of reflecting on the past, and looking onward into the future. As we enter the next phase of our life, whether it be college or armed force, I wish that all of us can use the tools and skills that we picked up at high school, and my challenge to each of you, and to myself, is to do all that we can do to reach our full potential, and always make sure that we are following our deepest and innermost dreams, as they may guide us to fulfill our purposes.
Being a member of it I wholeheartedly congratulate this class, for we have completed the transition from unrealistic teens to mature, knowledgeable young adults. And with the recognition of our accomplishments, I would like to end my speech with a quote from the most sophisticated book writer – Dr Seuss:
“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed.
You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest."
Go rock the world, 13s! And may the odds be ever in your favor.
Thank you
Photos by Lova
