TOP SCHOLARS From left, Jenae Williams, Jordano Sanchez, Adam Sealfon, Kristina Arakelyan, Christian Monsalve, Adrienne Edwards and Muhammad Safa on Grand Avenue in Brooklyn.
CALL them members of the Obama generation: Seven of New York City’s valedictorians, invited to discuss the future — theirs, the city’s, the world’s — could not help circling back to themes resonant from President Obama’s historic campaign: diversity, globalization, cooperation, hope. “We’re that high school class that was there when Obama got elected and that’s going to be there forever,” said Christian Monsalve, who was chosen by his classmates at Regis High School, one of the city’s most prestigious Catholic schools, to give the commencement address. “Who knows what, in the next 5, 10 years, what’s going to happen. We’re going to be that class that’s going to make that history.”
Before tossing their mortarboards into the air, all graduating seniors are spoon-fed equal parts inspiration and responsibility. But for the class of 2009, laying claim to The Future can be a disquieting proposition. Unemployment is discouragingly high. Wall Street is downsizing. Icecaps are melting. America remains at war. And politicians are still feuding — or in New York State’s case, locking one another out of rooms.
Yet, these best and brightest flip all this negativity into opportunity: to cure, to defend, to counsel, to heal, even to make a buck. “It’s not like we’ll be in recession for the rest of our lives, until we die,” noted Jenae Williams, the valedictorian at the Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music. A few expressed skepticism that profound change was possible in the short term. But more often they spoke of uniting, rather than dividing, reshuffling priorities instead of belaboring past mistakes.
These seven valedictorians — the five from public schools ranked highest in their class; Mr. Monsalve and Adrienne Edwards of the elite Spence School were selected to give the valedictory — are a tableau of American ideals. Four are from immigrant families — Uzbekistan by way of Armenia, Colombia, the Dominican Republican and Lebanon. Their parents include an elevator mechanic, two hotel banquet servers and a limousine driver, along with the chairman of the neurology department at Mount Sinai Medical Center. They speak Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, a little Hebrew.
Like all good New Yorkers, they bemoan the subway system, the hordes and the city’s willful indifference to personal boundaries. This summer, some are working to pay for college and some are sleeping off high school as they prepare to live their next chapter. “For our entire lives someone or somebody or some entity somewhere has been controlling what we do,” Ms. Edwards said. “I can’t imagine how liberating it’s going to be.”
The Students
KRISTINA ARAKELYAN
LIVES IN Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
COMING FROM Midwood High, 705 seniors
GOING TO Harvard
HOPES TO study philosophy and literature
SAT SCORE 2070
A self-declared pessimist, Kristina was editor of the school literary magazine and opted out of gym after she hit the teacher on the head with a basketball. She arrived in New York from Uzbekistan with her Armenian parents at age 6, and imagines herself someday living in a “little house with the white picket fence kind of thing.”
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ADRIENNE EDWARDS
LIVES IN St. Albans, Queens
COMING FROM Spence School, 49 seniors
GOING TO University of Pennsylvania
HOPES TO be a litigator
SAT SCORE 2160
Outspoken and assertive, Adrienne commuted 90 minutes by bus and train to Spence, where she enrolled in 7th grade and was head of the hip-hop dance group and the multicultural awareness club. “I don’t think I’ll be able to function at my highest anywhere else but New York because I’ve met all my challenges and had all of my progressions here.”
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CHRISTIAN MONSALVE
LIVES IN Bogota, N.J.
COMING FROM Regis High School, 134 seniors
GOING TO Fordham
HOPES TO work in economic development in Latin America
SAT SCORE 2030
Christian is the kind of boy that makes every mother’s heart skip a beat: curious, outgoing, confident, caring. He loves to dance salsa — “It’s like my passion” — and is enamored of his parents’ native country, Colombia, as well as travel generally. He has a “baby sister” — she is 16 — who is “like my best friend. I love her.”
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MUHAMMAD SAFA
LIVES IN Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
COMING FROM High School of Telecommunications Arts and Technology, class of 282 seniors
GOING TO Fordham
HOPES TO become a doctor
SAT SCORE 1850
Muhammad, a fraternal twin, has ranked first in his class since freshman year, and has volunteered at a hospital, doctors’ offices and a program to help people with developmental disabilities. Flashing a rebel streak, he shrugged off many questions. He dislikes imposing his views on the world: “I never make generalized opinions.”
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JORDANO SANCHEZ
LIVES IN Corona, Queens
COMING FROM Townsend Harris High, 251 seniors
GOING TO Yale
HOPES TO develop a breakthrough in pathology
SAT SCORE 2250
Sweet and self-assured, Jordano said he led a “sheltered” life and was not allowed to venture into Manhattan until 10th grade; his father drives him to school. “I don’t know if they’re exceptionally paranoid or something like that, but they’re just very protective of me. They know they can trust me, but they can’t trust people that they don’t know.”
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ADAM SEALFON
LIVES IN Brooklyn Heights
COMING FROM Stuyvesant, 791 seniors
GOING TO Harvard
HOPES TO do theoretical science/math research
SAT SCORE 2400
Home-schooled through eighth grade, Adam met President Obama this year as one of 40 finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search contest. On Stuyvesant’s awards day, Adam received 13 prizes and an overwhelming ovation. He plays piano, soccer and ultimate Frisbee. His favorite painting at the Met: “ ‘The Death of Socrates’ by Jacques-Louis David. I really like Neo-Classicism.”
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JENAE WILLIAMS
LIVES IN Soundview section of the Bronx
COMING FROM Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music, 62 seniors
GOING TO Southeastern University, Lakeland, Fla.
HOPES TO become a marriage counselor
SAT SCORE 1700
Jenae, a percussionist, has Type 1 diabetes, and her parents’ divorce shaped her aspirations. “If I could help at least one family, especially a family that has a child, especially that age or even younger, to not have to go through what I went through for those years, and even now, I will think I have really succeeded.”
Excerpts from the Interview
President Obama became an almost immediate topic as the valedictorians chatted around a conference table earlier this month.
ADAM If people think Obama can do things, then they’re going to work harder. The amazing thing about Obama is how well he was able to, during the campaign, to mobilize enormous numbers of people.
ADRIENNE I definitely think we’re turning toward a more working-together kind of society.
ADAM I think he’s exciting and inspiring.
KRISTINA I think our generation is really hyping things up. I mean, I understand that with Obama there’s a lot of change, but I really think we’re putting so many unrealistic expectations onto him. He doesn’t have a magic wand, he can’t just tear away all the problems, but that’s what we’re expecting and people are just going crazy and it’s just not fair — it’s just not fair to him, and it’s just not fair to us. All this change, and everyone keeps saying change, change, but it’s not really change. It’s a slow progression, maybe, toward change, but we’re just expecting too much.
ADRIENNE I think he’s kind of more symbolic in nature, kind of on a world scale. I don’t think we should expect Obama to wave a magic wand and fix everything, no. That’s not what I meant when I said “change.” I think people are starting to think differently about things.
JENAE He could do two things: He could live up to the expectation or he can crumble.
CHRISTIAN Expectation isn’t a bad thing, because from expectations comes action. Expectations are hope, and that’s a beautiful thing.
Asked what one thing they would change about New York City, Kristina immediately answered: the school system. The others chimed in.
KRISTINA From the bottom up. I think if you really want to get anywhere in the school system you have to really work hard, or get out. You have 35 kids in a classroom. Even the best teacher in the world couldn’t possibly handle giving the attention to each child that he or she deserves. You’re not really pushed, because in order to look better they stupefy the curriculum and they stupefy the Regents exam. I took the physics Regent last year, and I didn’t even have to study and I got 100.
ADAM I definitely agree that the curriculum has been watered down a lot. I mean, for instance, in mathematics, in eastern Europe, they learn what we learn several years earlier. And it doesn’t really work to have a lot of standardized tests, because first of all the ones that they have are pretty — there’s not a lot of content to them. You’re now getting teachers that teach to the exam instead of teaching the material. So, like, you learn how to fill in bubbles on a multiple-choice exam, instead of learning how to appreciate and understand physics or whatever.
JENAE I think certain teachers in my school definitely have prepared me more than I actually wanted to be prepared, but the bad thing was that I didn’t get those teachers until junior, senior year. Some things some teachers have done like passing kids because they have to get out, and not actually helping them, it makes me feel kind of bad.
ADRIENNE When I first got to private school, I was amazed I could write in the books. In public school, it was a major rule that you could not write in the books because somebody else had to use them. And I think that’s a good mentality, sharing, but it’s kind of like being able to take control of your education: This is my book, my class, this is my experience, I need to learn this.
CHRISTIAN There’s one thing that schools should dedicate more time to: self-esteem and confidence. They never taught me, for example, the motivation stuff in schools, it was something I picked up outside of school, in books. When I started doing that stuff, a bunch of new stuff started opening up for me.
Some of the students had already delivered their valedictory speeches. Some were still mulling.
ADRIENNE I quoted Asher Roth, and I said, “Do something crazy,” and I meant more, like, break barriers and think unconventionally and move away from your comfort zone and do something crazy.
CHRISTIAN I made people laugh, also made the moms cry, even some dads, too. I told them about the importance of happiness and I talked about, you know, I think you guys can all have happiness if you first have humility. Because that’s what our school taught us: faith in yourself, and faith in God. I told them that if you believe in yourself, then no one can deny you your dreams. That if you trust yourself, you can do whatever you want. So that was the message I left them.
JENAE At first I was so excited, then I realized I would have to deliver a speech, and it scared me. And I went to Google, and Google didn’t help at all. And then I talked about my next resource, that wasn’t Google, it was my friends, and that they didn’t help at all because they gave, like, so many different answers. They were like: “Make it short!” “Make me cry!” “Make me laugh!” “Don’t make clichés!” And they were all like, “If you don’t do this, I’m going to boo you off the stage.” I was so frustrated.
JORDANO I don’t think I could have come as far as I’ve come without all the help that I’ve received from not only my teachers and the faculty members, but my fellow classmates, so I wanted to leave them with that message: that there’s so much we can do together. There’s so much more we can accomplish if we work together rather than work independently. I quoted something judge nominee Sonia Sotomayor said, which I actually read in a New York Times article: “I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences, but I accept my limitations.” And the purpose of using that quotation was to show that we all have our limitations, but we have less of those limitations now than we had four years ago, and even more as we continue to gain knowledge and mature.
MUHAMMAD I didn’t start yet. I was reading a few speeches, one by Steve Jobs, and he wrote a speech in 2006 and it was about death. I mean, it was a good speech, like, really good, like very intriguing and such. But it was just about death, the overall thing, so I don’t know.
KRISTINA I have a pretty pessimistic view on life in general. It’s not about death, but I basically said that whatever we may accomplish, we’re all going to make mistakes, and the important thing is to try to fix them, and if you can’t, you can’t. But the important thing is to never cross your morals. I think that, in general, human morality is deteriorating, because people are willing to do anything to get what they want. And I think that at the end, when you’re looking at life 70 years from now, that’s one of the things you’re definitely going to regret.
ADAM Well, all my friends have told me, “Just make it funny,” because there are going to be a bunch of other speakers who are going to go for, like, the serious moral message, but just as long as it’s funny, everyone’s going to like it. And I was thinking, like, the one way to make sure that your speech is not funny is to try to make it funny.
Their favorite New York City spots.
JENAE Down on 14th Street, or Astor Place, there’s this restaurant called Bamn and I love that restaurant. It’s an automated restaurant where you go in, you’ve got to get $2 in coins, put the $2 in, pull down the little lever and get your food. And I’m just, like, that’s amazing, I love it. Because when I’m downtown in the Village, I don’t really want to stop and eat, and I’m just like, ‘Let’s just do Bamn, let’s just go put $2 in and get some curly fries and keep going.
KRISTINA Herald Square. Because they have the Mrs. Fields store and they have the pretzel cart, and they have all those shopping malls, so it’s a full day right there.
CHRISTIAN I like the bike path on the West Side Highway, like on the Upper West Side/Washington Heights area, because, like, I can see Jersey. And the bridge, and its like a family recreational area.
MUHAMMAD The Brooklyn Bridge, because I first walked there when I was, like, in seventh grade, and ever since I’ve walked down there — I don’t want to say countless times, but at least, like, 20 or 30 times with my family. And we always take pictures by that little thing with the plaque where they say who built it or whatever, and we just stand in front of it and see the ocean and stuff. Or in Brooklyn there’s this place called Shore Road, and I know that’s, like, dirty or whatever, because my uncle and I would go fishing and all the fish would be already dead, or, like, mutated or whatever.
JORDANO Terrace on the Park in Flushing Meadow Park, and I went to the highest point on that building, and I was able to see a view of the entire city, which was a breathtaking sight.
What is one word that best sums up how you’re feeling at this moment — about to graduate from high school and embark on the rest of your lives?
CHRISTIAN Motivated.
ADRIENNE Oh, you stole mine!
JORDANO Anxious.
JENAE Ready.
ADAM Hopeful.
KRISTINA Unsure.
ADRIENNE Driven.
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