Serving Others: One Impressive Grad

⬆️ You're looking at Elizabeth Bonker, valedictorian of Rollin's College class of 2022. And as you look, you may have a question for us: "Why are you drawing my attention to her?" 

Our answer: The straight-A student may have just given one of the most memorable commencement speeches of the past decade. 

🎓 Background: Elizabeth was one of five graduating seniors to complete her degree with a 4.0 GPA, but the other four students voted unanimously for her to give the speech at graduation as official valedictorian. 

It was a unique choice, seeing that Elizabeth cannot verbally speak.

She lives with nonspeaking autism, a neurological condition that affects her motor skills and has prohibited her from speaking since she was a toddler. There are 31 million nonspeakers with autism around the world.

• Thankfully, Elizabeth was taught to type – a skill that was the "one critical intervention [that] unlocked my mind from its silent cage, enabling me to communicate and to be educated like my hero Helen Keller."

💻 ➡️ 🗣️ The speech... Wearing a cap and gown decorated in colorful flowers, Elizabeth used a text-to-speech program to address her fellow graduates for six minutes. She encouraged her fellow students to live their lives in service of others, inspired by the school's most famous graduate, Mr. Rogers.

• The valedictorian asked the graduating class to tear off a small piece of paper and write down "'Life is for service,'" a quote from Mr. Rogers himself that was found scribbled on a scrap a paper in his wallet after he passed.
• "Then put it in your wallet or some other safe place," she said. "And when we see each other at our reunions, we can talk about how our commencement notes reminded us to serve others." 

❤️ Bottom line: The irony of a non-speaking person encouraging others to speak up and serve others was not lost on Elizabeth, who ended her speech by simply saying "if you can see the worth in me, then you can see the worth in everyone you meet." 

Watch her incredible speech here.