I find myself attached to a relatively less traveled corner of campus. Down in front of the office, where those without cars wait to be picked up, an oversized checkerboard sits on top of a shallow swell in the field. I’m sure you all know the exact spot. For one reason or another we’ve probably all tread that slab of concrete at one point or another during the last four years. I remember as a freshman, a typical day might include a rendezvous with friends for an after-school chess match. It was the age of no cars and after-school boredom for those without older siblings and prompt rides home, and the nerdy endeavor of chess was enough to pass the time. Those who spent many afternoon hours in the library might remember the chess fad extending into sophomore year. By then several of the knee-tall chess pieces that had once been housed in the large box in the bushes had gone missing. On particularly slow days, the sophomore versions of us might play regardless, filling in the vacancies left by the missing denizens of the chessboard with books, backpacks, or even obedient bystanders.

As the age before driving came to a close, so too did the reign of the chessboard over our idle minds. Hours of procrastination on-campus became farewells in the dirt lot (followed by an equal number of hours spent in group or individual procrastination). Even so, I’ve found myself drawn back to that corner of campus time and again. Lying in the September shade, I’d talk to friends and eat swiftly-melting chocolate. Or a teammate and I might take our golf clubs and chip back and forth across the cement, wasting away the afternoon afflicted by that terrible disease known simply as senioritis.

I’m sure you all have places like this that serve as reservoirs of recollection. Maybe a certain spot in the parking lot, or a favorite bench up at the covered eating area, or a lake over the hills and far away. May these places, and the people we’ve shared them with, never fade from our memories. When I come back here in a few years, what will I see? This place is going to look different, since the school administration decided to add all the cool stuff the moment we take off. But when I walk these halls once more, I’ll superimpose the Newman that I recall over the Newman of that future reality. Where the swimming pool will eventually be, I will forever remember as the spot where that one guy completely ate it trying to back flip. Where the new prep school will stand, I will recall as the place of the bears, where we’d argue over the crack of the whip and gavel or ponder the function of flame cells (then beg to run about on the balcony). Where the covered eating area and the dirt lot meet, I will remember the strumming of guitars and “Layla Revisited.” It’s places like these, across our little campus, across our small town, that will be calling me back. When I try to picture these places, it’s impossible to recall the landscape without populating the scene with old friends. The last four years will manifest themselves in the geographical and the interpersonal. I’ll construct a metropolis of my reminiscing, a cityscape with streets lined with lockers and familiar faces walking checkerboard sidewalks. It’s these familiar faces that make the reminiscing so pleasant. It’s you, my friends and peers, who have made these places so special.

I give my thanks to you. Some of you I never had the pleasure of getting to know. Some of you I’ve gotten to know fairly well, but much too late. And some of you have been my best buds for the better part of a decade. So long, class of 2012. We may be separated by great distances, we may grow apart, we may be lost to each other, but we will not be forgotten. We share the metropolis, our assembly of joint recollections. As we bid farewell to Newman, this common history will always invoke that old sense of community that we found here, pulling us together and calling us back to our home.