PARIS — While 240 students sat patiently Saturday night, each waiting to receive their symbol of high school success — their diploma — Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School alumnus Collin Del Cuore issued a challenge for their future.

“It’s only when you embrace your unique life experience that you can use it to your advantage,” Del Cuore explained. “Just by growing up here, just by simply being a Mainer, and just by being a graduate of
Oxford Hills, you already have this to your advantage. You all have a unique perspective to offer the world. You just need to embrace it.”

Del Cuore graduated from Oxford Hills in 2000 and is now the director of creative marketing for the Oprah Winfrey Network.

With a world of experience since leaving Oxford Hills for Los Angeles, Del Cuore spoke of how important it is to remember where you are from and how being from Maine offers graduates a unique perspective of the world that very few have.

He encouraged graduates to use this unique perspective to be more aware and interested in the world, to take risks and challenge themselves and others in thoughts and beliefs. Not always assuming what they hear is true.

“When you take risks you either win or you lose, you either fail or succeed. There is no middle ground in taking a risk.  …to succeed, to ensure yourself the best possible outcome, you must take risks. You will make mistakes and you will fail, but a mistake is only a mistake if you don’t learn anything from it,” Del Cuore said. “Those who take the risks and are willing to fail are the ones who succeed the most.”

The message to be different and to take risks was part of the theme of the night by all the speakers.

Principal Theodore Moccia began the ceremonies by sharing a text he received from his daughter earlier in the day: “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

“I think tonight is pretty fitting for that,” he said, as storm clouds had moved through the area throughout the day, threatening the outdoor commencement at the Don Gouin Athletic Complex.

Moccia said he was proud of the graduates’ compassion and caring, and said he was certain the group “would make the world a better place, just because they care.”

Addressing the crowd, Salutatorian Theresa Wilson said that when she was little she wanted to be a super hero and how, as she grew, that dream was replaced with numbers and school. “Doesn’t it sound ludicrous that five-year-old me wanted to save the world, but 15-year-old me wanted to lose 10 pounds,” she asked? “I lost so much, I lost myself.”

But, “I found hope for a new me. It was through words that I rescued myself.  Words like I’m sorry, I forgive you, I love you, I am good enough and, most importantly, words like goodbye,” Wilson said.

“I said goodbye to my old self and learned to accept me exactly as I am.”

Wilson called her classmates to action: “Let’s turn our gowns into capes. You have to believe that we are superheroes. We are the Wonder Women and Captain Americas of our own futures,” she said.

“You have to believe that we possess in our hands and in our words the power to save ourselves.”

Valedictorian Ben Andrews challenged his class to think about the people and not the schoolwork. “I would spend less energy on trying to impress people and focus on appreciating them,” Andrews said. “The most essential thing I learned in high school was what I really cared about. My wish for today’s graduates is that you never stop caring.”

The motto of the Oxford Hills Class of 2016 is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous message: “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

That motto was echoed in the graduation message of compassion, caring and taking risks.