“My life has come full circle as I stand for another graduation, another rare moment when life's sinusoidal waves -- the troughs of despair rising to the crests of elation -- stand still and pause for our silent reflection.” |
Megan Popkin, diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma in eighth grade, delivered the graduate address. Ms. Popkin, who entered Harvard University in the fall of 2007, recalled attending her middle school graduation four years ago and listening to her twin sister deliver the valedictory speech, "a forceful testament to overcoming life's suffering by greeting each sorrow as a challenge and an opportunity -- even such a challenge as a twin sister's battle with cancer." Now, after treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Ms. Popkin said, "My life has come full circle as I stand for another graduation, another rare moment when life's sinusoidal waves -- the troughs of despair rising to the crests of elation -- stand still and pause for our silent reflection." Ms. Popkin noted that she was "thankful to have spent the hardest time of my life at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. The doctors, nurses, technicians, interns, social workers, and patients have done much more than free me from the bonds of sickness so that I could live my life again. . . . My cancer taught me what real fear was -- real pain and real suffering -- but the people at Memorial Sloan-Kettering revealed to me the meaning of real compassion and real strength, along with the awe-inspiring power of our common humanity."
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2007 Pediatric Convocation Watch the 2007 Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Pediatric Convocation.
Runtime: 41 minutes. |
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Richard J. O'Reilly, Chair of the Department of Pediatrics, delivering the keynote address, reminded the students that "you have faced down your dragons and taken your lives to a new dimension, exemplified by the fact that you're graduating from high school," and said he saw before him "those who teach us how to get on with life [and] have a capacity to deal with life in ways that most of us never attain."
Vice Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics Paul A. Meyers presented each graduate with a special Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center certificate of achievement. Joining him were Mary Maher, principal of hospital schools for the New York City Department of Education, and Mary Ellen Fitzsimons, high school teacher for P.S. 401M, Memorial Sloan-Kettering's hospital school, who presented the students with Department of Education awards. (Support for Memorial Sloan-Kettering's school -- one of 40 in a city-wide program called Hospital Schools - is provided in part by the Associates Committee of The Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.)
Memorial Hospital Physician-in-Chief Robert E. Wittes concluded the celebration by telling the graduates that "what you've learned at a very early stage in your lives is that you can do anything you want. You've learned that in one of the hardest ways possible, but you've learned it. The sky's the limit."
