Jaiden Grimminck Graduation Speech

Jaiden Grimminck – Graduation Address – June 9, 2021

Brandeis is where I’ve spent more than a third of my life. My family had confronted me to make the decision to change schools. With a bit of reluctance (ree-luck-tense), I said yes. Now, looking back, it was the right choice. Each grade had so many fun and challenging experiences, that helped me learn more about our world.

Coming into 3rd grade, I was the only new kid in our class. I remember that everywhere I went for the first week, I would bring my water bottle and drink some water whenever I got nervous. I think I drank over 20 full water bottles over the course of that week. But soon after, there was no need for me to drink my water bottle anymore because I became comfortable in the class and had a great rest of the year. 

Fourth grade. Lots of books. Moving on.

In fifth grade, in art, there were so many empty cardboard boxes. I started making small structures out of them, and decided to embark on a big project - making a giant tower out of them. I started building the structure out of those boxes, and soon the entire class joined in one by one. It started growing large, and by the end it was very tall. But unfortunately, all great things must fall eventually, and this one did.

I could go on for paragraphs about middle school, but that would take too long. Overall, I remember all the crazy conversations we had with Mr. Friedman, all the different journal prompts in English, JCAT and learning about the Torah in JS, messing around in the Design Lab with Andrew, mathletes and math games in math class, skits in Spanish, creating many things in science, and so much more. 

A few weeks ago, I was organizing all of my papers from middle school. I was looking through each and every one, and so much of middle school came back, so many memories were discovered again. I saw how I grew, how other people grew, how everyone had changed. And it was a great experience.

I would like to thank all of my teachers that I’ve had throughout my years at Brandeis. I would never have gotten this far without you. My classmates, thank you so much for being there in the class and for being able to make many memories with you. If I list the memories I have with everyone, I would go far beyond the time limit for this speech, but at least I can say thank you.