<b>Chapel Talk by Melissa Roja</b>

The first story I’m going to tell is a little embarrassing for me. But no matter how unflattering it is, I’m still going to share it with you, because it would be hard to explain what I learned, and how I learned it, without sharing this story. And maybe it’s something you’re going through right now, and maybe you can take something from it too. So here goes. It was 1994. I had just transferred from public school to Menlo School, a relatively affluent prep school in Atherton, CA, which is the Northern California’s wealth-equivalent to Beverly Hills. It was the beginning of a rough time in my life – not only did I live in a land before frizz-control hair products, I had the three B’s going on: Bangs. Braces. Bad skin. And to top it all off, I was 4’5”. Fitting in at an elite Bay Area prep school was not just a challenge, it was an impossibility. I dreamed about being friends with the most popular girls in my class: Michelle Meisel, Courtney Lodato, Casey Eagan, and Jenny Parsells. Line them up and they’d look exactly like a Hollywood casting call for a movie version of The O.C.I remember seeing them hanging out in the quad flirting with the older varsity football players, and wishing I could be in on their conversations, or at least a blip on their radar screens. They lived the fast track that many Atherton princesses led – wild parties, too much money, lots of experiments with drugs and alcohol.

Now, it didn’t take much observational skill for me to notice that all the popular girls in my school were not really into the whole “going to school to learn” thing. They skipped class and went downtown or went to the beach in the back of one of the football players’ jeeps, or if they were in class, it was definitely not easy for them, and they were constantly complaining about the homework and reading they never did, and the “like, majorly hard tests.” All of this behavior was not lost on me. I distinctly remember one morning before English class, Jenny Parsells was talking to one of the girls on my basketball team. She was complaining that Shakespeare was too confusing, that she didn’t get Macbeth. My teammate pointed to me and said, “Why don’t you ask her? She’s smart.” I remember the way she said “smart,” like it was offensive to her, like she was spitting out something repulsive. I looked down at my completed homework, which had taken me most of the night to get through, then back at Jenny, and I made a really poor decision. I said, “Dude, I like so did not get it either.”

Not surprisingly, my charade that day got me immediate, albeit temporary, results. Jenny Parsells not only talked to me that day, but we had a bonding moment about how hard Shakespeare was, even though it was relatively manageable for me. I took the charade even further in class, when Ms. Hansen called on me and I deliberately gave the wrong answer.

I thought I was doing myself a favor, pretending to be something I was not. I really wanted a seat in that jeep. Over the next two months, my grades took a huge nosedive. I went from straight A’s to straight C’s. Teachers got worried. I got kept after school for mandatory study hall. One of my teachers even tried to send me to a learning specialist, even though I had never previously had problems. But my favorite English teacher, Ms. Hansen, knew better. She pulled me aside after class one day and called me out. She said, “Okay, this has gone on long enough.” I played dumb – I was getting really good at it. “What are you talking about?” “You may have fooled them, but you can’t fool me,” she told me. “What you’re doing is stupid, thoughtless, and selfish, and I’d be embarrassed if I were you.” She leaned in close to me, so close I could see every speck of color in her eyes. “Don’t waste this opportunity or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

I went home that day shaken. She was right. I wasn’t fooling anyone – I was only fooling myself. If I failed out, not only would I be letting down my family, who had fought tooth and nail just to come to this country and find a way to get me a great education like this, but I’d be letting myself down. And at the end of the day, faking who I was didn’t make me any happier. It didn’t win me any more friends than I already had, and it took me a long time to realize that I shouldn’t have to go to these lengths to be popular. I had dug myself a huge hole, and it was time for me to dig myself out. I did everything I could think of to improve my grades. I participated in class, did all the assignments plus the extra credit, devoted more time to studying and catching up on things I had missed. By the end of the semester I was able to pull my grades from C’s to B’s. And that place on the honor roll had never meant so much to me.

During my sophomore year of high school, I had managed to make the worst and best decisions of my academic life. While I am pretty embarrassed about what I did, things ended up okay for me in the end. With Ms. Hansen’s help, I was able to realize that pretending to be dumb was pretty dumb in and of itself and got my act together just in time. Over the next two years, Jenny and I both grew up a little bit and actually became decent friends despite our differences. I got to know her as a person, and discovered that she was smarter than the airhead blonde front she put up. But she loved that fast track, and didn’t want to give it up, and she never let anybody know what she was really like. I often wondered if she was really happy – no one knew the real her. We ended up in completely opposite directions after graduation. I moved to the East coast and started my freshman year at Amherst. Jenny started at Santa Barbara City College, but she never finished. She and some friends decided to do a few lines of cocaine and get behind the wheel of a car. They missed a hairpin turn on a coastal highway and the car plummeted 300 feet off a beachside cliff. No one survived.

Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how dangerous the wrong choice could have been. After Jenny’s death I was forced to understand that there are real consequences that stem from the choices we make about who we are and who we want to be – consequences that can affect the direction of your entire life. There are a couple of things to take from this. First, look around at what you have. You have at your fingertips what so many people in this world will never have: an amazing school where so many more people than you think are looking out for you, every day, whether you like it or not. You have at your disposal a topnotch education that includes teachers who are passionate about their subjects and whose priorities include your best interests. Think about it. There are not a lot of places where you can find all that. Every day for the rest of my high school career, I went home and went for a walk in my hometown. Everything I saw reminded me of what I had that others didn’t, and how I had almost squandered it for nothing. So look around you, and seize the moment. Take advantage of this opportunity given to you before it passes you by.

As Paul Watkins wrote inStand Before Your God, sometimes you grow up in jolts, from one suddenly realized thing to another. Two years ago, my cousin Genevieve found a lump in her neck and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes that affected her immune system. It scared us all, as it was our family’s first brush with cancer, and I marveled at the strength she possessed to fight the disease, to undergo chemotherapy and radiation, all the while never knowing for certain if she was going to beat it. Then I got my own jolt. Last year, when I was home for Christmas, I got handed the biggest shock of my adult life. I had just come in from a run and was getting ready for a shower when I found it. An unmistakable lump in my neck the size of a walnut. Now, I have been scared on a number of occasions in my life – at movies, before big tests, on airplanes – but those things were nothing compared to the kind of fear I felt in the moments after I found that lump. I prayed it was nothing. I thought it would go away after a day – it didn’t. In the days that followed, I couldn’t sleep. Then I found another lump, this one at the base of my neck. I was panicked. Every thought was haunted by the “what-ifs” in fast forward – what if I had cancer? What if I had to go through chemotherapy, just like Genevieve? What if my life was going to be shorter than I expected? From that moment on, every breath was important, every action was important – every moment of my life had to be used in the best possible way. My life became a whirlwind of doctor’s appointments, needles, tests, CAT scans, more tests, more bloodwork. And every time the phone rang with the doctor on the other end, my heart jumped into my mouth. Every time I went to the hospital, I felt this gnawing fear that the doctor would sit me down and say, I’m sorry, I have no good news. In that waiting room, I had a lot of time to think about what I would do if my number was up. I began to learn that fear can do two things – it can paralyze you, or it can inspire you to take action. Even if time wasn’t on my side, I made a few promises to myself. I would try to be a better friend. A better daughter. A better teacher. A better person. If I just got one more chance. I would face my fears. Get to the top of an ice cliff and look at Lake Placid from 200 feet up. Get my master’s. Do a triathlon. Laugh as much as possible. Tell my family and friends how much I love them, every day. Speak in front of the entire school and tell them how much teaching here has meant to me because of all of them.

When my bloodwork came back normal at the end of March, it was as if I’d been given a second chance. Those lumps had been my warning – they taught me just how much of a gift I’d been given and the kinds of things I could do with it. Quite unexpectedly, I learned more about myself, about life and how I wanted to spend it than I ever thought I would. I learned how much more valuable time became when I thought I might not have it. I learned how important friendship was, who would be there for me in the long run, who would drive me to the hospital when I was not feeling well, or who would hold my hand when the needle went into my arm for the hundredth time. I learned how important the smallest of connections were, and just how much inner strength I really had. I’m not sure how many of you knew what I was going through, but even if you didn’t, you should know that every day you gave me more strength and support than you’ll ever know. You may not have even known you were doing it. It could have come in the form of something that made me laugh or smile, or something as small as a hug on a bad day. And that kind of unconditional support, the stuff we do without even thinking about it, is what I love about the people here, and it’s something no one should take for granted.

Many of you think that once high school and college are over, you get to stop learning. You get to take a break from all the papers, tests, pop quizzes, and massive amounts of reading. Well, yeah, in a sense, you do. But one thing I’ve learned in my time here at Millbrook is that you never stop learning. And sometimes the best learning comes from the learning you do on your own.

What I didn’t realize is that while I was teaching here and trying to do all these things, you guys were all teaching me things too. At Millbrook you’ve taught me again and again how much fun learning is, and how people can learn things together and from each other without even knowing it. With your amazing feats in the classroom, in the arts center, and on the athletic field, you’ve proven to me in so many ways that you’re not afraid to be yourselves, and that it takes real courage to do that.

Elie Wiesel once said, “All I can do is leave a trace. I can leave it on the ground, or on a piece of paper, but the best place to leave it is in the heart of someone else.” From my cancer scare and my experience in high school, I came to realize again that each of us is really only capable of leaving a trace, and that trace has to be packed with as much good as you can get. So, what is your trace going to look like? How do you want to be remembered here? As the person who always gave his best effort? As someone who never let a moment pass her by? Or do you want to be known as the student with so much potential, if only he’d use it? The proverbial slacker, the laziest kid, the biggest fake?

That kid who pretended she wasn’t smart in high school is long gone. My teacher made me realize that if I couldn’t be myself then I wasn’t fooling anyone – I was the biggest fool of all. She helped me get to where I am today, which is standing in front of you, hoping that you will find the strength to be yourself, and to push yourself beyond what you think you can do, just because you can. Life is not something meant for passengers. It’s for drivers – and every one of us can and should be a driver. Life’s just not that much fun in the passenger seat.

The last thing I have to do tonight now that you know all this embarrassing stuff about me is thank you. This being my last year at Millbrook, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for a few things. Thank you for making my job less like a job and more like an adventure. Thank you for teaching me, every day, about life and its possibilities. Over the last five years we’ve laughed, debated, hugged, cried, sledded, argued, made cookies. We’ve watched Alias together, thrown lacrosse balls and basketballs, gone to Mabbettsville, run down School Road, gone over papers, decoded Shakespeare – and at the end of this journey, I know I have become a better person because of my experiences with you. I am not the same person I was when I came to this school, and I owe that to you. It is because each of you, in your own way, has left a trace with me.

So I leave you with a challenge tonight. Have the courage to be authentic. To be real. Take chances, good chances, and don’t be afraid to fail. Life’s too short to be afraid all the time. If I had been afraid to fail I never would have driven down School Road in a station wagon full of my belongings to take this job five years ago. And to not come to Millbrook, to not have taken a chance on all of you, would have been the biggest mistake of all.