Six students are chosen to present speeches by administration, teachers and students.

Dean of Students Mike White sent out an email on May 12 announcing the six graduation and baccalaureate speakers to the 19 seniors who had auditioned for the parts.

According to his email, seniors Cathy Ang, Patrick Xie and Belinda Zeng were chosen to speak at the baccalaureate ceremony on June 3 at St. Jude’s Church, while seniors Pooja Pandey, Srisruthi Ramesh and Roshan Varadarajan were picked for the upcoming graduation ceremony at the football field on June 7.

“I was flipping out and jumping all around the house screaming,” Ramesh said. “I was like, ‘Mom I can’t believe I’m speaking at graduation!’”

The auditions were held on May 10 from around 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. White was the only member of the administration team who was a part of the selection committee which also consisted of nine teachers and two juniors from the upcoming ASB and class officer team.

According to David Clarke, one of the teachers on the committee, the panel looked for each audition to touch on this year’s graduation speech theme: “In this moment.” The committee also looked for a combination of delivery and content as each speaker presented their speeches for their allotted two minutes. After all the auditions, the committee chose the top six students whom were divvied up between the baccalaureate and graduation ceremony.

“They told us to concentrate more on delivery than content [in the auditions], because the content is going to be adjusted somewhat between now and [the actual ceremonies],” Clarke said. “But clearly people were thinking in terms of the content as well as the delivery, so it really just depended on the teacher and how they balanced those two things.”

With both the graduation and baccalaureate ceremonies less than a month away, the seniors are looking to edit, practice and memorize their three-minute speeches in time for their respective ceremonies.

“The biggest thing for me is conveying the sense of being on the precipice or edge of something new,” Zeng said. “Right now we’re closing one chapter of our lives by finishing up high school — but, at the same time, we’re also getting ready to prepare ourselves to follow our own dreams and reinvent ourselves.”