June 2012 Nerds!!! 12 years ago, I gave the valedictorian speech at my high school graduation.

I only remember two specific things that I said: -You cant make footprints in the sands of time when you are sitting on your ass- and who wants to make assprints in the sands of time? (finding stupid quotes on the internet was a new thing back then, and I was totally into it) -A quote from A.E. Housmans poem To An Athlete Dying Young:

Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man.
My whole speech was basically an exhortation based on a totally ignorant misreading of that poem, saying that if you dont go out and achieve- and keep achieving- people wont have respect for you anymore. My entire high school career had been about achievementsValedictorian! High School Sports (kind-of) Star! Other Stupid Shit I Did Because I Was Told I Should For College Applications! I didnt know how to make people proud of me unless I had achieved something. It only took about a month for me to realize that, when I went away to college, nobody really wanted to see my collection of plaques and ribbons and trophies. So, in an atypical angsty moment, I threw every award Id ever gotten into the trash. Ive come to terms a little bit with all of it though. Many times Ive wondered if, given the opportunity to go back and relive high school, I would do anything differently. I honestly doubt that I would. I may not have done them for the right reasons, but I actually enjoyed the things that I did. I liked learning new things, and I had a lot of fun playing sports. Most importantly, though, I dont think my life would be the same now if I didnt do those things. You guys taught me a lot about teaching in that regard. I love that you challenged the idea of mere compliance. If you thought an English assignment was bullshit or some weird math thing I was making you do was stupid, you called us out on it. Hell, I changed my entire system of grading because a couple of you guys proved to me that you didnt need to do every practice problem to ace a test, or if you didnt do well, you would sit and work on your own time for hours until you did get it. You were the first group that felt comfortable enough to call me an asshole when I needed to be called it. You thrived on challenges, and if you werent challenged, you werent going to do it just to please someone else. They had to convince you of its worth to you. You are the kid I wish I was in high school if I had had more guts. I would like to think that I was the one who taught you that, but I know it was the other way around.

You dont really know the whole process of how I became a math teacher in Brooklyn, and the story is a confusing mess that involves me living in 7 different states between the age of 18 and 25 with a couple of total life changes, a weird act of defiance that ended up with me getting a degree in Religious Studies, being stopped by Hurricane Katrina from moving to New Orleans to be near some girl that I planned to marry, and moving back to my hometown for a brief moment when I had no idea what else to do. Here is the important part- even when something happened that I didnt plan on that seemed like a disappointment or a roadblock, things turned out much better in the end. If I hadnt have gone through all of that, I would not have ended up teaching. Im not at all successful like my parents or my teachers had hoped that I would be- they all expected me to be some fancy engineer or scientist making hundreds of thousands of dollars for some company. But I consider my life successful because I am happy. And the biggest reason I am happy is because of you guys. As a high school student, I did very well, but I didnt really catch the excitement. I was good at math, but I wasnt getting Eulers Identity tattooed on my body and calling it the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I didnt know anything about astronomy because I never studied it and had no real interest in it. I had never looked through a telescope. You will find this hard to believe, but it wasnt until we started going to the museums and the astronomy events that I got excited about learning about astronomy and space. You nerds have so much curiosity and so much passion and so much love for learning that it is impossible to not want to study it too. I mean, look what youve done to my room! What started as 4 or 5 of you guys playing around with a projectile launcher trying to hit the Justin Bieber bunny in the face has turned into a madhouse of 30 kids every day during lunch, wreaking havoc on everything in my room for hours at a time. Juniors who I dont even teach are begging me to bring them to astronomy events. Teachers send freshmen to my room just to see you guys, hoping that by seeing how much fun you have with learning, it will inspire them to have the goal of being a nerd someday too. You caused a serious culture shift at the school. Seriously, you have been the most important group of students that this school has ever had. I am happy with how well you guys did on Regents exams in my class and how much you guys learned, but what I am most proud of in my entire career as a teacher is that I didnt stop you guys from loving to learn about math and about science. In fact, that some of you guys are actually choosing science as a field is incredible and humbling to me as a teacher. To think that I have been just a small part in your growth into the amazing young men and women that you are is an amazing feeling. Again, I cant stress enough how important you guys were to my development as a teacher. Because of you, I saw how much learning takes place outside of the classroom. I am so happy to have been able to share those experiences with you. I hope that they never fix all

the holes in the wall from when you attached the pencil or the knife to the end of the paper darts that shot from the 6 foot long blowgun that you built, and I hope the neighbors on the next block continue to be baffled at how a small piece of paper could end up on their steps or in their 3rd floor bedroom. The broken spring from when you built a slingshot to fire me down the hall in the chair, or all (!) of the broken meter sticks, or the disassembled bicycle wheel gyroscopes all of those things are evidence of something great. It is the best kind of trouble that anyone can experience, and that is learning. You certainly have found a pleasure in finding things out, and have passed that on to others at the school. The hard hat and the weird Styrofoam armor you built for the hallway jousting day will continue to get put to good use, Im sure. And I wouldnt have it any differently. I am so proud of each and every one of you, and I will always be proud of you no matter what you end up doing, as long as you are happy. Please dont ever lose the passion that you have. Continue to be foolish. Continue to be contrarian. Please continue to experiment and to seek happiness. Congratulations on graduation. .Greg.

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at thecradle of true art and science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. -Albert Einstein