Good afternoon, fellow graduates of 2005, friends and family who have aided us in getting to where we are today.

Here we are, standing on the edge of life after graduation, and I am wondering what is out there. What challenges will we be overcoming as we go into this amazing new phase of life? Just thinking about the next few years gives me the thrill of the unknown. Of course, along with this has come a lot of anxiousness about the future as well. This is the biggest transition point many of us have ever come to, and just that can stimulate fear. A few things that I have learned over the past 18 years give me hope and remind me that, no matter how I may feel, I am well prepared for what is coming next.

Last year in Academy Loren and Linda Krenelka gave us an unusual assignment: each of us was to take an entire quarter to fill a small notebook. The objective was for us to talk to each one of our classmates, find out a little bit about them, and make a list in our books of positive character qualities we saw in that person. In the back of our notebooks we wrote down a statistic: 13% of success is subject knowledge, and 87% of success is people knowledge.

What better place to grow people skills than in the environment of homeschooling and Family Academy? Growing older together, tackling interesting assignments together, and struggling with things in our personal lives together, I have grown to love the families of Family Academy in an incredible way. This includes my own family as well. This seems to be one of the most important life lessons that I will ever learn: people are what matter - life success will come from loving and relating to people.

Another thing: You know that classic phrase, "The world is my classroom?" I am beginning to see that it's true. The great thing about studying at home is that it does not require the confines of a rote daily schedule of learning. I am sure that most of you have had the experience where you are going somewhere for fun and then when you arrive your parents tell you what you are doing will be educational. After all these years I finally see the benefit of this! No matter what we are doing we have the opportunity to learn about our world. Every day and every situation is the chance of a lifetime to take in the details of what is going on around us. As we go out into the world, think of how much the wiser we will be to learn from everything that we do and see, from every experience however exciting, boring, or painful.

Likely, the most important thing I have learned is that everywhere is God's sanctuary. I can't even recall how many times the conference table has become a place of prayer and intercession. These past two years in Academy we have had the blessing of morning worship before class. Since I was very young my parents have led my family in daily Bible time in our living room. All of these experiences have taught me that God is where we are. He isn't just waiting for us in church buildings. I am so grateful that we worship a God who is with us in every situation. This has become an important lesson for me this year in particular. I have been in Running Start at Centralia College, and nothing has been more strengthening for me than the knowledge that every time I call on God from that campus He is available to give me the grace I need. We can speak to Him any time we need Him, which is always since we literally can do nothing on our own.

I think that too often we begin to believe that we can only be successful if we have been planning our career paths since we were in the first grade. Our success as we go out into the world does not depend merely on our SAT scores; nor does it solely rest on our GPAs or the lengths of our community service lists. This relieves me, because I know that no matter how hard I work for these things, they don't always come out as I want them to. Studying for years with Mom as my teacher and going through high school with Family Academy have given me a different perspective. I now see that success in life is the outcome of things like I mentioned before: relating to people, learning from every situation, and continually turning to God. Before I finish I want to share something from the Bible - This is a well-quoted verse, many of us probably have it memorized, but I believe that mastering the principles in this verse is the single most important thing that any of us could do in preparing for life ahead. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths." Today, as each one of us crosses a new threshold of life, let us trust in the Lord's understanding; let us acknowledge Him in all of our ways. With this, let us enter into the wonderful challenges ahead of us, firm in the knowledge that we are prepared to take on the future.