Congratulations to all of the high school graduates in Westchester County in 2021. Like all of us, you have been through a difficult COVID year, but you have made it and are moving on with your lives.
Stepinac High School Valedictorian Nicholas DeSanctis, from Ossining, gave us some words of wisdom, as he heads off to Harvard in the fall.
“As we go out into the world as men, we must learn to follow new dreams while discovering who we are and sticking to what we know about ourselves. We are entering a recovering world no one has seen before; the future is unwritten and we must make choices for how we will change it. With lives going back to normal, we enter a new world of hope knowing that we carry with us Stepinac strength and no matter where we go, we will always have an entire community supporting us. We go out as men of justice, strength and confidence, turning our obstacles into opportunities.”
“Even with a shortened junior year, I’m sure I speak for most of us in saying that this year was by far the toughest year of high school, each for our own separate reasons. For many it was the lack of motivation; for others, it was the added stress of an unknown pathogen. We didn’t know where our next meal was coming from (n)or if our loved ones would be safe.
“It would be a fault of mine to not state that we as students did not give up. We took on the present and began to push forward.”
