I feel luckier than ever to have been raised and schooled on an island.
Eleven years ago I stood at a podium giving my high school graduation speech as one of five graduates from North Haven Community School. Like any typical island graduation, most of the community was gathered for the annual event, the entire high school entered with us so we wouldn’t be lonely doing the grand march alone, and all five of us gave speeches.
My entire graduating class of 1994 was made up of girls, and the junior class was all boys. I don’t remember any of us dating all that much in our thirteen years of school together (although I am sure there were a few town dances and temporary moments of teenage weakness). We felt much more like siblings than classmates. We had spent so many years together in small combined classrooms, each of us learning how to read and write with special attention from the teacher. In high school we had taken incredible field trips we planned and fundraised for ourselves. We designed and demanded our own classes (from AP History to a greenhouse and hydroponics class) and we learned most essentially that what was possible in school and the world was what we could make happen ourselves.
While I cannot quite recall what I said during my own graduation speech, I do remember that Friday June evening and the feeling of being excited for what was next and yet still totally unsure of what life off the island would be like.
A few months later I found myself in Rhode Island starting college in a freshman class of thirteen hundred students, about four times more people than lived on the island where I had spent my first eighteen years. I remember sitting on the campus green with all my incoming classmates. The Dean of Students was giving a speech to introduce us to our each other emphasizing our diversity. He talked about our diversity in race, all the states and countries we were from, that we came from rich and poor families, and listed other facts and figures. Then the Dean said, “We have students in this new class from a graduating class as large as two thousand and from class of just five.” I remember hearing murmurs in the audience around the “class of five.” And of course, I was the five.
My new friends were quick to begin the questions — do you have cars and televisions on your island? Is there a bridge? Is it weird to be around so many people? Do you feel different?
I remember thinking that when the Dean mentioned where I was from, that I was proud to be different — to be from an island, to be from Maine, and to be from such a small and unique community. Of course there was also the part of me that was relieved to have a break from island life — I was, as so many of us referred to the island in high school, finally “off of the rock!”
I learned quickly in college just how important it was for me to be from an island and to be from a community that was a real “community” and to not be from a suburb in Connecticut or Ohio or from a big city, like so many of my classmates.
Growing up on in a small island where you know everyone around you, where you have to come up with your own weekend entertainment often seemed painfully boring, especially as a high school student. But I know that what seemed confining to us as teenagers has made us far more creative, independent, tough and different as adults.
Out in the world, away from our island community, many of us island kids will feel insecure and lonely from time to time. But I firmly believe that those of us who grew up in Maine’s small communities have distinct advantages we have learned from those around us, from how to relate to community members of all ages, to caring for our neighbors, to commonsense problem solving, to thriving in a direct democracy.
We are different because we are islanders. And I believe this “different” is a very good different — a different all island graduates are lucky to be.
Hannah Pingree (D-North Haven) is a member of the Maine Legislature. Her comments are adapted from a recent graduation speech she delivered on Mount Desert Island.