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Graduation, and all the endings that come with it, seemed to sneak up on Mountain View High School’s Class of 2026, student speaker Eleanor Shin told the crowd at Friday night’s commencement ceremony.
The weeks leading up to graduation were “strange,” Shin told the crowd, with goals that students had worked toward over four years suddenly seeming like they’d been met too quickly.
Ordinary lunches and jokes took on a deeper meaning, and feelings spilled out with urgency, Shin said. But the discomfort, she said, is part of transitioning to a new time in life.
“We will no longer be able to rely on endings to push us to say what we really mean, and maybe that’s the point,” she said.
Nearly 500 graduates gathered at Mountain View High School’s football stadium on June 5 to celebrate the past four years and cross the stage to receive their diplomas. Thousands of family members and friends looked on from the audience.
Principal Kip Glazer told the graduates that for many of them, the end of high school would represent a new beginning, with students getting to choose their path without a written rubric to meet or follow. She described the night’s theme as “Written in the Stars,” noting that students get to decide what is written. Constellations – like Ursa Major and Orion – were decided by people thousands of years ago, she said.
“The truth is that the stars are just scattered points of light,” Glazer said. “You get to choose what will be written in, and for, the stars.”
Keeping with the celestial theme, school board President Thida Cornes told the students that they are like stars, each with their own gravitational pull. Cornes encouraged the graduates to meet challenges with courage, understand deeply, think critically and provide help whenever someone is in need.
“Your future is what you choose to do with the light you already have,” she told the graduates.
Glazer also took time to remember those who couldn’t graduate, including Andre Retana, who died in 2022 in a fatal collision while riding his bicycle. He would have graduated this year as part of Mountain View High School’s 124th graduation ceremony.
“This evening, we have Andre Retana’s family joining us to represent those who are unable to celebrate with us,” Glazer said. “I invite all of you to pause and think about the ones who couldn’t be here this evening.”
After the ceremony, graduate Valentina Nieva-Gomez told the Mountain View Voice she had mixed feelings about graduating – she was sad, but excited. Mountain View High was the first school Nieva-Gomez joined after moving to the United States from Colombia.
She plans to spend two years at Foothill College, then intends to transfer to UC Berkeley to study political science. Nieva-Gomez said that she was especially thankful for the school staff because, with their help, she was able to apply to college.
“The staff members that received me my first day, they were so helpful,” she said. “All the time, they would check in on me and see how I was. [They were] really supportive.”
