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I was asked by several individuals to post my Commencement Speech to Rutland High School on Thursday, June 11, 2026 for broader distribution.

2026 Rutland High School
Commencement Speaker
Jenny Everett

Date: June 11, 2026

To Principal Schillinger, faculty and staff, the graduation committee, and
the families and friends with us today — thank you. You didn’t just plan
a ceremony. You created a moment these students will carry for the rest of their lives. That is no small thing.  And seeing you here tonight, I could not be more proud to be a Rutland High School graduate.

And before I say another word, I need to tell you about a phone call.
A few months ago, my phone rang. It was Mike Norman — Coach
Norman — my track coach from what feels like another lifetime ago.
Now, Coach Norman is not the kind of man who calls just to talk. When
his name showed up on my screen, I thought, what did I do? Did I miss
a workout? Does he know I cannot do 70sec 400m repeats anymore.

Old habits.

But he said something I didn’t expect. He said:

“I’ve been thinking about you as our graduation speaker and I just wanted to ask if you could make it.”

That was it. No agenda. Just those words.

I sat in my house for ten minutes after that call. Because here’s the
truth — Coach Norman had carried some piece of my story without me
ever knowing it. And that phone call reminded me of something I want to give to you today:

The people who shape us are often working on us long after we’ve left the room.

So. Class of 2026. You did it.

I want to talk to you today about three things: Grace and Gratitude, the
help that lives within you, and the most important person you will ever compete against — your prior self.

And I’m going to tell you three stories. One from a village in Africa. One
from a basketball gym in North Carolina. And one from a class that changed the way I think about growth.

When I was playing hockey in South Africa, I was told a story about a
young American who traveled to a small village in Africa. Whether it
happened exactly this way doesn’t matter. The truth it carries does.
He gathered the children of the village at the edge of a field. He placed
a basket of candy at the foot of a tree on top of the largest hill he could see, maybe a hundred yards away. And he said:

“When I say 1-2-3 go, whoever reaches the basket first wins everything inside.” He said 1-2-3 go.

Every single child reached out and took the hand of the child next to
them. And they all ran together. They arrived at the same moment,
sat down under that tree on the highest hill, and shared the candy.
The young American was stunned. He said, “Why? One of you
could have had it all.” A little girl looked up at him and said one word.

Ubuntu.

In the traditions of southern Africa,
Ubuntu means: I am because we are.

Another child said — “How can one of us be happy if all the others are sad?”

That young American had set up a winner-take-all game, because that
is the world he came from. One winner. Many losers. First place takes the basket, the medal, the trophy, the money.

But those children had never learned to see the world that way. They
didn’t see competitors lined up beside them. They saw their people.
And you cannot win alone when you define winning as something you share.

Now think about your own life. If you are honest — truly honest — you
can name at least three people without whom you would not be sitting in that chair today.

Maybe it’s a parent who worked a second job so you could go to school
or on a field trip. Maybe it’s a teacher who pulled you aside after class
and said, “I see something in you.” Maybe it’s a friend who talked you
off a ledge at 11 o’clock on a random Tuesday night. Or maybe it’s a coach who called you years later with no agenda.

Grace is what they gave you. Gratitude is what you owe them — not in money, not even always in words, but in how you live.

Ubuntu doesn’t ask you to be indebted. It asks you to understand that you are connected. That when you succeed, you carry them with you. That when you reach back and pull someone else forward, you are repaying a debt that can never be invoiced — only passed on. 

So before this day is over — tonight, this week — find your three people. Look them in the eye. Tell them. You don’t have to be eloquent. The act of gratitude is enough.

Now. I want to tell you about a moment from a Duke women’s basketball practice.

The team had just lost the final drill of the day. As a penalty, the losing players had to run. They were fully capable of making the required time. Their bodies could do it. But they were frustrated. Angry. Disappointed. And so they ran slower. They gave less.

Head coach Kara Lawson watched this happen and stopped everything.
She looked at her players and said something that has stayed with me ever since I heard it.

She said: giving less after a loss is illogical.

Think about that word — illogical. Not wrong. Not weak. Illogical. Because if you lost, and then you respond to that loss by giving less effort — what exactly do you think is going to happen next? You are guaranteeing the same result. You are making certain that tomorrow looks just like today. Reduced effort after a loss does not lead to a win.

It leads to another loss. And another. And another.

Coach Lawson called it “falling into the trap.” The trap of letting frustration decide your effort. The trap of letting a bad result shrink the size of who you are. The trap of waiting for things to get better while actively making them worse.

Her broader message to that team — and now to all of us — was this:

“We all wait in life for things to get easier. It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better.”

Not the situation gets easier. You get better at handling it.

Here is what that means for you. If you start running today and a mile leaves you gasping — you might think, just give me two weeks, and this will feel easier. But two weeks from now it isn’t easier. You are stronger. Your lungs have adapted. Your legs have grown. The mile didn’t change. You changed. That is the whole secret.

Life is not going to ease up for you. The tests don’t get simpler. The
jobs don’t get less demanding. The relationships don’t get less
complicated. The losses — and there will be losses — don’t get less painful.

But you get more capable. More resilient. More practiced at standing back up.

So here is the question Coach Lawson was really asking her players. And I’m asking it to you today.

When you lose — and you will lose — what do you do next? Do you slow down? Do you shrink? Do you give the situation permission to decide your effort?

Or do you say: this is exactly the moment I run harder.

You are a student. You will sit in classes that bore you, confuse you, or feel irrelevant. You have more patience than you think.

You will be a worker. You will have bosses who don’t see you, coworkers who frustrate you, and days when the job feels thankless. You have more resilience than you think.

You will be a parent, many of you — or an aunt, an uncle, a mentor, a big sibling to someone who is watching your every move. You have more love than you think.

You will be a teacher — formally or informally — because every person who has ever lived has taught something to someone. You have more wisdom than you think.

The help you are looking for is not always outside you. Sometimes — often — it is within you, waiting for you to stop looking elsewhere long enough to find it. And the most powerful lesson you will ever teach is not written in any curriculum. It is this: I fell down, and I got back up, and I came back harder.

Stop waiting for the moment to get easier and start becoming someone who handles hard better.

Now I want to tell you about a class.

A ceramics professor divided her students into two groups at the start of the semester. She told the first group: you will be graded on quantity. Make as many bowls as you can. Every bowl counts. The more you make, the better your grade. She told the second group: you will be graded on quality. You have the entire semester. Make one bowl. Make it perfect. At the end of the semester, she evaluated all the work. And something remarkable happened.

Every single one of the best bowls — the most refined, the most beautiful, the strongest — came from the quantity group. Not one came from the quality group. How is that possible? The quality group had more time. They had more focus. They had one singular mission.

But here is what the quantity group had that the quality group didn’t: repetition. They sat down at the wheel every day. The first bowl was rough. The second was a little better. The third better still. By the time they reached their thirtieth bowl, they had learned things about clay and craft and their own hands that the quality group — sitting and thinking and planning and perfecting — never discovered.

The quality group was waiting for the perfect moment to make the perfect thing.
It never came.

The quantity group wasn’t competing with each other. Each one of them was quietly, daily, relentlessly competing with their own previous work. Each bowl had one opponent: the bowl that came before it.

Can I do better than yesterday’s bowl?

That is the question. That is the whole question.

The scoreboard, the ranking, the comparison — none of that is nobility.
Nobility is looking at who you were twelve months ago and being
honest about the gap between that person and who you are today.

And then closing it. And then doing it again.

You may not be the best student in your class. But you can be a more curious student than you were last semester.

You may not be the most talented worker in the room. But you can be more prepared, more reliable, more generous with your effort than the version of you who walked in last year.

You may not be a perfect parent. But you can repair what you break. You can say “I was wrong.” You can show your children that the bravest thing a person can do is look honestly at themselves and decide to do better.

Sit down at the wheel every day. Make the bowl. Make the next bowl better. And twenty years from now, look back at what you’ve built — not compared to anyone else, but compared to the person you were when you walked out of here today.

That is the only competition that matters. And it is the only one you are guaranteed to win — if you keep showing up.

Let me leave you with three commitments. Not bullet points. Things to carry.

Lesson One: Grace and Gratitude — look outside yourself. You didn’t get here alone. You never will. Remember Ubuntu. I am because we are. Name your people. Thank them. Be one of them for someone else.

Lesson Two: Handle Hard Better — look inside yourself. Life will not get easier. But you will get stronger. Don’t fall into the trap of letting a loss make you smaller. When it gets hard — and it will get hard — that is exactly the moment to run harder.

Lesson Three: Compete with your prior self — sit down at the wheel. Forget the leaderboard. Make the bowl. Make it better than yesterday’s. Show up every day and earn that.

I want to close where I started with a phone call I didn’t expect.

Here is what that tells me:
What you do for people does not expire.
The kindness you show today — it doesn’t expire.

The effort you put in when no one is watching — it doesn’t expire.
The standard you hold yourself to, quietly, consistently, even when it’shard — especially when it’s hard — it does not expire.

Those Duke players, in that gym, on that day — they had a choice. Run slower and confirm the loss. Or run harder and begin to change the story. That choice is in front of you every single day. The gym just looks different.

Those children under the tree in Africa didn’t run together because someone told them to. They ran together because they had been shaped — by their families, their village, their elders — into people who could not imagine winning alone.

And that ceramics student, sitting at the wheel, making her thirtieth bowl — she wasn’t thinking about the student across the room. She was thinking about yesterday’s bowl, and how today’s could be better.

You have been shaped too. By this school. By these teachers. By the coaches who show up years later just to say they’re proud. By the parents, families, friends, and people filling these seats right now — who showed up today because they believe in you, and because theyare part of you, and because I am because we are.

Now it’s your turn to shape someone else.

You are walking out of these doors today as the best version of yourselves so far.

And the most exciting thing I can tell you is this:

So far is just the beginning.

Now go handle hard better.

And for goodness sake, be better tomorrow.

Congratulations, Class of 2026