BrewsterConnections - Brewster Academy

Effort Does Matter
The Ivy
The Ivy Address marked the opening of the Commencement celebration and
took place on the eve of commencement exercises. Keeping with tradition,
the top academically ranked postgraduate and the third academically
ranked senior offered reflective remarks to graduates, their families,
and faculty. The ceremony concluded with Academic Dean Marilyn Shea
presenting the senior prefects with an ivy plant – a lasting and living symbol
of the graduating class. The ivy was planted in the gardens around the
Academic Building where it will comingle with the ivy of previous classes.
Dana Hughes, a three-year student from Wolfeboro, offered the salutatorian
address to his classmates. In his introduction of Hughes, Mike Cooper referred
to Hughes as “a distinguished scholar whose work ethic and readiness to reach
out and help many students helped him earn the Math Department Award his
sophomore year and the Harvard Prize Book Award for science his junior year. His
senior year, he earned the role as president of our National Honor Society. He
has served admirably in our Math Tutor Center and excels at tennis … He has
captained the boys’ junior varsity hockey team and received the MVP award. He
has led teams over the past two years to participate in the highly competitive
Moody’s Math Challenge.”
This year’s Ivy Address speakers were senior Stephanie Menezes and
postgraduate Max Hooper.
Hughes told his fellow graduates that rather than talking about class memories
and the great times he had at Brewster, he owed them something meaningful
and chose to speak about the one thing he felt was most important to achieving
success no matter where someone is in life: prioritizing.
“You need to know what takes priority in your life and when you figure that out,
it becomes considerably easier to make the right choices,” Hughes said.
He encouraged his fellow graduates to always give 100 percent to all that they
do. “It’s important that you put work and effort in on a regular basis. … No
amount of studying at the very last minute will ever equal the work put in over
a long period of time. … A two-week project with one day of effort will not have
the same successful outcome as 14 days of effort.”
In reference to this he recalled his interview with the director of admission of
the College of Engineering at the University of Miami. The director reminded
him that a grade of 91 in physics might seem good enough, and in fact it is
an accomplishment to be proud of, but if an engineer only has 91 percent of the
relevant knowledgeable of the task at hand that doesn’t make for the best engineer.
Hughes asked his classmates to consider his favorite quote by basketball coach
John Wooden: “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to
do it over”
In closing he said, “You all – current Brewster students and the graduating class
of 2011 – are some of the most benevolent individuals I have come across in
my lifetime and created one of the kindest communities that you can’t just find
anywhere in the world. … I most certainly would not be the person I’m today
without the influence of this great community. Thank you everyone for the past
three years [that] I will not be forgetting anytime soon.”
Putting Down Roots: Senior prefect Jolie Wehrung holds the ivy to be planted
on behalf of the Class of 2011. She is joined on her right by Ivy Address
speakers Max Hooper and Stephanie Menezes, on her left by senior prefect
John Wadlinger; and Mike Cooper and Dan Mudge (P ’98, ’02), president of
Brewster’s board of trustees, are in the back.
The Class of 2011 by the Numbers
117 - number of graduates
46 - number of graduates who were Lifers
54 - number of graduates who held leadership positions
33 - number of graduates who will play sports in college
13 - number of graduates who left behind at least one
sibling at Brewster
www.brewsteracademy.org
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