Speech

Good evening Mr. Martori, Ms. Clark, Mrs. Shwartzberg, faculty members, friends, families and my fellow graduates. My name is Chrissa Pantazis and I am honored to stand before you as the Salutatorian of Benjamin N. Cardozo High School’s Class of 2014. In October, when I learned of my ranking, I was confused, shocked, flattered, and elated, all at the same time. As the excitement died down and I began to worry about my salutatory address and a myriad of ideas of what I wanted to say flooded my mind. But, as June rolled around and senioritis kicked in, my speech felt like just another last minute homework assignment I needed to complete. For inspiration, I searched “hashtag salutatorian” on all forms of social media: Instagram, Twitter, and even Tumblr. Unfortunately, these all failed to inspire me and I had to resort to the one and only urbandictionary. According to this esteemed site, the salutatorian is “The person who just missed being valedictorian by a few GPA points. A very miserable person indeed. 2nd place is just the first loser.” Well, I don’t feel like a loser, and I don’t think any of us standing here today are losers. We’ve made it through 4 long years of high school and for that we should all be proud. Coming from an all Greek elementary and middle school, I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I first walked through the doors of Cardozo as a freshman. I was terrified as I waited in my dad’s mini van, refusing to get out until I saw my one and only friend; together we took a deep breath, and entered high school for the first time. When I looked to my right I saw a small Asian girl and to my left was an extremely tall caucasian boy. I saw head scarves, which I shortly learned are actually called hi jabs, on 3 of the girls in my official class. And as I walked by the Foreign Language department, I was confused as to why a group of Hispanic boys were engaging in a card game that I didn't know how to play. I had walked into a