Alumni Graduation Speech
By Samuel Tabachnik, Class of 2008
June 19, 2011

Anyone who knows me knows I have not exactly had the most traditional post-high school experience. After graduating from Gann in 2008, I took a gap year in Israel, spent one year at Boston University and finally ended up in New Orleans at Tulane. While many of my friends were finishing up their third or fourth years at the same school, I was a 21-year-old nomad finishing up my first year at a new institution. I had the additional luck of a severe lack of facial hair and a baby face that made me look like a 12-year-old middle schooler. This made for some interesting conversations. Groups of sophomores would walk over to me and ask: “Oh, are you a prospective student?” “I’m actually a junior,” I would respond. Their faces turned red and suddenly things got a lot more uncomfortable.

When I was going through the arduous, painstaking, miserable experience of choosing where I wanted to go to college, I was often met with little sympathy from my friends.

“Your dad is Davey Tabachnik, the college counselor. Can’t he just tell you where to go?”

I would smile and shake my head. It just doesn’t work like that.

Up until now, your whole lives have been structured. From the moment you exited the womb, you have been on a path. Preschool, elementary and middle school. After that it was on to high school. There were very few choices you had to, or were allowed, to make. This was the path and everyone did it. All of a sudden you graduate high school, and you have options. There is not just one clear path. There are gap years in Israel or City Years in Chicago. There is studying in California or volunteering in Africa.

Even for the privileged son-of-college-counselors like myself there is not a right or wrong way to do things. This stuff is hard and contrary to my friends’ beliefs, there is no sure bet. For some of you, everything might just work out. For others, it may be a bit more difficult. But that’s the beauty of it: you have option to postpone college for a year and travel the Holy Land if your heart desires. You are off the beaten path and can start trekking your way through the Appalachians, the Talmud or a biology textbook.

Gann taught me the value of experiential education and even after graduating, this knowledge acts as a gift that keeps on giving. Through a community service trip to New Orleans my junior year, I discovered aspects of life that cannot be taught in a textbook: human suffering, redemption and the power that Tikkun Olam can bring to a despondent Katrina survivor. Ms. Doris’s water-ravaged house in New Orleans’ 7th ward became our classroom with sledgehammers instead of pencils and drywall in place of smartboards.

When Rabbi Lehmann helped found this school in 1997, he made sure that students not only took part in rigorous academics but also in sports, arts and community service. Sure, I was less than thrilled when I had to take ceramics and art history—just check out my pottery: truly horrendous work. When I left school, however, I was prepared for life outside of homework and tests. I was prepared to volunteer in the community and not just better my own life.
For three months in Israel I lived at the Ayanot youth village (or boarding school), tutoring, playing and talking with troubled youths from around the country. Out of the 600 kids on my Young Judaea program, only 15 chose to live at a youth village. In addition to these unruly Israelis were a group of 15 refugees from Darfur, Sudan who had fled their dangerous and hostile home for a life of peace. We played soccer, learned about verbs and talked about our different cultures. To this day I am still in contact with many of them via facebook, looking for a chance to reconnect.

At the beginning of September I will board a KLM flight bound for Entebbe, Uganda where I will be studying abroad for the fall semester. I will be doing independent research, living with a Ugandan family and learning in the field. I do not know what surprises will be in store for me, what unexpected challenges and hardships await but I figure I will continue down the nontraditional path. It has yet to lead me astray.

So, after you make it through today—and I promise today will end at some point—you will veer off the unwavering path of structure and requirements and onto a new course of limitless opportunities. Whether that path leads to college, a gap year or something entirely different, the point is not to settle for the easy and comfortable. Blaze your own trail.