Lena Shamos ’25 was the recipient of Poly’s prestigious Joseph Dana Allen Award, presented in honor of Dr. Joseph Dana Allen, Head of School from 1917-1948. This award recognizes the highest scholarship combined with exceptional character.

At Poly’s 168th Commencement on June 6, 2025, Shamos delivered a speech reflecting upon both the start of her time at Lower School and finding herself on stage as she and her classmates graduate. She spoke of challenges and times when coming to school was trying, but ultimately realizing how much teachers truly got to know students’ likes, goals, and even fixations. Like Senior Speaker Reese Roaman ’25, she spoke of the enduring community forged during her tenure and concluded with shout-outs and thanks to everyone who helped make Poly feel like extended family in the best of ways. Enjoy Shamos’ Commencement speech!

Good morning, family, friends, faculty, and of course, Poly’s graduating Class of 2025! 

I stand before you today honored to be able to share a few thoughts on this momentous occasion, a culmination of years of hard work, friendship, laughter, occasional tears, and most of all memories of our class, memories that we will cherish as we move on to the next chapter of our lives and forever.

Now, as someone who’s been at Poly since kindergarten, since the days of fighting over blue Crayola markers and building Lego dream houses during choice time, I feel uniquely qualified to look back and say: wow, we’ve come a long way. As our cartwheels turned to car wheels, we’ve evolved from kids who once carried sparkly backpacks and cried when someone wasn’t sharing the coolest new toy robot in the tech classroom to young adults who lug around textbooks and notebooks and still sometimes cry just for slightly more existential reasons. Progress is not always linear.

As much as I want to shout out the golden days of elementary school recess and snack time, today I want to talk about our high school experience because this is the version of us crossing this stage today. The version shaped by 11:59 deadlines, taking laps around the first floor, and lunch debates over whether it’s a Commons or Paneantico kind of day.

We’ve mastered the art of writing papers, tackling complex calculus problems, and typing “Hello, quick question…” in an email when we actually mean “Please help me before I lose my mind.” But even though I’m standing here giving my valedictorian speech, I mean it when I say that high school wasn’t just about the academics.

I honestly didn’t always love Poly. After endless late nights of stress and no sleep, there were days I wished the bus wouldn’t come and I could go back to bed. But, Poly, in all its quirks and occasional chaos, gave me people. My best friends and classmates will be my family for the rest of my life. Our teachers, who put up with our incessant questions and annoyances and still somehow remembered our goals, favorite things, and weird obsessions. This place exemplifies community in the truest sense.

I’ve come around to be incredibly grateful. Not just for the big wins, this speech, or the moments that look good on paper, but, as cliche as this may sound, I have to say it: “The little things.” That feeling when you’re sitting next to a friend in an awkward class environment and you slowly look up at each other, lock eyes, and burst into laughter. The late-night study sessions for linguistics, when Oakley, Tessa, and I would look through the Veracross directory to harvest random names so we could practice transcription into the International Phonetic Alphabet. 

When I was younger, I always dreamed of standing up here one day and feeling like I was living in the end of the High School Musical franchise. That idyllic vision of high school and togetherness seemed so out of reach when I walked into 9th-grade orientation. But our class, especially this senior year and our last spring on campus together, (with) slip ‘n slides, fake cockroaches and all, has shown me that it genuinely feels like we have reached that level of high school joy they portray on screen in the movies. We are all in this together. 

Leaving our homes, families, and the halls, trees, and ponds of this school, which we’ve grown so comfortable with, is going to be hard. So let’s take what Poly has taught us, not just the transcripts, Chinese characters, Maclaurin polynomial series, but the friendships and voices, and move into this next chapter. Thank you to every teacher, classmate, friend, and, most of all, my family—my mom, dad, and brother Lester—for helping me get here. 

If you know me, you know it wouldn’t be right for me to end my speech without providing some words from Taylor Swift, who perfectly says, “The scary news is, you’re on your own now. But the cool news is, you’re on your own now.”

Class of 2025, we did it!