POLAND — Hanging above the stage at the end of the Poland Regional High School gymnasium and all 115 members of the graduating class of 2014 was the class motto, with attribution to Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Speakers from the graduating class, addressing their own at the moment of taking their shared symbolic step from childhood into adulthood, the moment of change and diverging paths, reflected on the distance they had come.

Salutatorian Renee Reid recalled her beginnings at Elm Street School and the mural that each kindergarten class creates; the tiny handprints of each class that are hung high on the gymnasium walls.

“I remember looking at the one that says ‘Class of 2014,’ seeing my own tiny handprint and thinking ‘wow, that day will never come,’” Reid said.

And Reid wondered how she and her cohorts had ever come together to this day which has allowed all to leave their tiny handprints not only on Poland Regional High School, but also on their three communities and loved ones as well.

Reid saw her class marking the end of an era — an era where students from Poland Regional High School’s three sending towns, Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland, were raised divided, raised to be competitors.

“Competing academically and athletically, we developed hindering prejudices and severely misguided preconceptions of what people from the adjoining towns would be like,” Reid said.

Reid attributed the coming together of the class to the cooperative spirit created in Winter Carnival competitions which made diversity an asset.

Valedictorian Delaney Woodford credited the classes’ ability to bounce back from all the hardships they had faced as the source of the coming together.

“As a group, we have found a way to make the most of every situation,” Woodford said. “If I had a word to describe our class … it would be ‘resilient.’”

Woodford pointed to the class reaction to losing the Winter Carnival competition senior year, managing the very most it and noting that “the world did not end upon the tallying of those scores.

“Use your resilience to make it through the long nights studying for finals, endless days of searching for job openings and anything else life decides to throw at you,” Woodford said.

The keynote speaker chosen by the class of 2014, Dr. Voot Yin spoke similarly of how the path to true growth often lies in turning the struggles and failures in life into success.

Yin, assistant professor at MDI Biological Laboratory and Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Novo Biosciences, noted that progress in science is the end result of countless failures finally producing success.

“If you are afraid to fail, you will be your biggest obstacle to your success. You must believe in yourself. Failure is but a bump in the road, and is the foundation for your success,” Yin said. “Tomorrow is today’s dream.”

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