Salutatorian: Learn From Mistakes and Move On

Don’t pretend your mistakes never happened, but learn from them and then let them go. That’s good advice for anyone, but especially for those graduating from high school, and that’s exactly what salutatorian Rachel Faust intends to tell her classmates at ’s graduation on Friday night.

Faust said she is very excited to speak to her classmates one last time and remind them of all of the memories the class of 2012 has shared.

Some of Faust’s favorite memories come from band trips she took.

“We went to Disney World and Chicago together. I will never forget the fun we had on those trips.”

She also includes her membership in the school’s Book Club among her farovite memories.

“We would get together every other week and talk about the book we had read. And there was always food,” Faust recalled.

She is leaving the days of Book Club, Debate Team, Art Club, Math League, Science League and “just about every band thing imaginable,” Faust is headed to Cornell University in the fall, where she will study mechanical engineering. She would like to work in sustainable energy.

“I want to find new ways to help with new energy sources,” she said.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Bucknell and Rochester Institute of Technology were also on Faust’s list of schools. Bur Cornell won her over.

“I visited there last year during spring break, and I just fell in love with it. It seemed like a good fit for me,” she said. “Once I got accepted to Cornell, all the other acceptance letters were kind of ignored.”