Elida Bulldogs get ready for their next milestone in life after they went from seniors to alumni during their graduation ceremony. It was a difficult path to get to graduation, but around 130 members of the 2022 Elida class celebrated their accomplishment at the Fieldhouse Sunday afternoon. The Valedictorian Madison Burkholder and Salutatorian John Foust left their classmates with some words of encouragement as they head in different directions after graduation.
Burkholder reflected on the students overcoming the interruption of the pandemic and coming back to school after months of online learning their junior year.
“Coming back into Junior year felt strange and unfamiliar. We were seeing each other for the first time in 7 months and we also had a whole new set of guidelines we had to follow,” says Burkholder. “We had to adapt to the life of mask-wearing and an altered classroom environment. I think is pretty amazing and even though at no point did we know what the next step in front of us was, we were able to build resiliency and handle that next thing.”
“I am sure many of you are familiar with Thomas Edison, or the man who created the lightbulb back in 1879,” says John Foust. “Yet you probably didn’t know that he had thousands of unsuccessful attempts. Despite all of these failures, he stayed determined and succeeded. Because he didn’t see the failed attempts as failures, but he said and I quote, ‘I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work.’ Just one simple change of mindset led to a whole path to success.”
This was Elida’s 129th commencement ceremony.
