“That’s SO CRMS”

Graduation Speech: Maia Cullwick ’24
June 2024

When Jeff first asked me to speak today, I had no idea what I would say. He gave me a few prompts; community, Covid, the CRMS experience, etc. Nothing resonated with me, and I began having a reoccurring nightmare where I would get called up to give my speech, and I would stand here at this podium with absolutely nothing to say. In the nightmare, I look down at the blank piece of paper in front of me and say something like, “Covid….. It happened.” Luckily, that is not the case today; as you see, I have a paper full of words. 

I had never had such intense writer’s block before, so much so that it was still present in my dreams until, finally, someone gave me advice that stuck: “Write what you know.”

As a CRMS student, a refrain you get used to hearing is, “That’s so CRMS.” For example, wearing white dresses and flowers, no shoes, on graduation day instead of a cap and gown, that’s so CRMS. Usually, it’s a teasing, slightly judgemental comment on the odd CRMS traditions. To outside observers, our campus is a strange, mystical bubble that houses the weird hippy kids of the valley and beyond. The Urban Online Dictionary describes CRMS as “A boarding school in Carbondale for extreme left-wing liberals and other people that would not fit in at a normal high school.” I can see where they get the idea, but I don’t see us like that. From the outside, our first day as seniors was atypical. At the welcome back formal dinner, we honored the 70th anniversary of CRMS by smashing the celebratory cake in each other’s faces, rinsing off in the ditch, and then playing a game of volleyball which, in keeping with the tradition of CRMS ball sports, wasn’t competitive at all and became a dance party next to the volleyball net. Cue the “That’s so CRMS.” Despite how it might come off on the outside, I would never trade this night for anything normal. When presented with the cake, we could have easily all had a piece, used our hands to deliver cake to mouth rather than cake to face, kept our formal attire tidy, and gone home, but one thing I’ll tell you about our class–we do not throw away our time. 

Freshman year, instead of the wilderness experience that every other CRMS class had before and after us, we had “Quarantine quests” and small six-person orientation groups. The boarding and day students were mostly segregated; day students weren’t allowed to stay for breakfast or dinner, and the boarding students weren’t allowed off campus. The barfork tables were divided by tape lines where only four people could sit compared to nowadays, when up to 20 can be squeezed into one table. When classes went online between Thanksgiving and Christmas break, all we knew of each other were the disembodied voices behind the blank zoom screens; cameras turned off. I didn’t even know what most of my classmate’s noses looked like beneath their masks. As the world watched us that first year, they feared how we would turn out–words like isolated, anti-social, and detached described the condition that the COVID freshman would undoubtedly be cursed with, so how do you end up with a class that is such the opposite? 

Now, I’m by no means the biggest philosophy expert here, but like any person feeling existential angst in this big wide world, I’ve pondered the question, “What is the purpose of life?” As I’ve mulled it over through the years, I’ve decided that the purpose of life is just to fill your time here. It’s a tricky line to walk in everyday life, zooming out enough to understand that the time we’re given is short but staying present enough to understand that what we choose to fill our time with, no matter how trivial, is still important. 

Starting off our four years together as COVID freshman was no easy feat, but I truly cannot imagine a better group of people to combat it with than all of you. Maybe it was that first year of COVID that showed us how precious it is to have a moment face-to-face with someone– taught us how to treasure the opportunities we’re given to shove cake in our unmasked faces and dance around together. Or maybe we are truly just a divine group of humans who love to have as much fun as they can all the time, even if they come out looking stupid in the end. The class before you today does not throw away their time but fills it unapologetically. In growing up together these past four years, we’ve eaten breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, gone to classes together, done sports, clubs, and work crews together; gone to foreign countries together, floated scorching hot and frozen rivers together; contracted food poisoning together– spent virtually every waking moment together. In the past four years of growing up together at CRMS, the school has undoubtedly taught us how to fill our time, but we have taught each other how to treasure and make the most of it. Every individual in this group is as remarkable as the whole group is together, and our mutual love for fun and for each other has always outranked the pressures of being normal. It’s hard to be given something as beautiful as this class for only four years, but we have certainly left our mark on each other. So, current and future CRMS students, when you inevitably are telling someone about something you did at school where you were filling your time unapologetically, doing something that made you feel alive, and they say, “Thats so CRMS,” you can smile to yourself knowing the direct translation of that is “That is a person filling their time well.” 

One day, somewhere not too far in our short, god-given time, CRMS will be something we filled our time with, past tense. We’ll explain it to people– peers, coworkers, our kids– this is where I went to high school. They probably won’t understand. Even next year, the people around us won’t know what it’s like to have an accordion accompany your history class, Irish jig on a quad full of dandelions, or watch Eli try to hit a golf ball. Next year, we won’t be pulling out onto the highway behind each other on the way to school. We won’t be living together, walking from breakfast to class or from active to dinner. Next year, we will be across states, oceans, and countries. They might not understand when we try to tell them this is where I met the most amazing group of humans, where I learned to cherish and fill my time, and where I learned to be “So CRMS.” I realize now that the writer’s block I was experiencing was because of the need I felt to write something as special as you are to all of me. So, in being told to write what I know, here it is: I know that if my future is filled with half as fun, loving, kind, and caring people as you, then the future will be bright for us all.