A revisionist speech

It wasn't her first choice, but Jem Lugo delivered the second version of her commencement speech.

After she was introduced during Thursday evening's ceremony, the graduating class at Springstead High School gave her a thunderous ovation.

Decked out in a white cap and gown, a sheepish Lugo walked to the podium, let out a deep breath, smiled and read her speech.

"Springstead High School's class of 2009," Lugo said. "Look around you. This is it."

Her principal and senior sponsor thought her original speech was too personal, too individualized, too critical and therefore, too controversial.

Their opinion was later seconded by the superintendent.

She was told to write another one, or else another student - one with a lower grade point average - would take her place.

"The most important thing that I could think to tell you tonight is to remember where you came from," she told her classmates. "Stay true to who you are and who you have become throughout the past four years. Do not conform your values or your personality for the sake of anyone else's ... Do not relinquish your individuality to correspond with the common standard."

The irony of those words, she said, was intentional.

"Being forced to write a mechanical speech, I became angered," she wrote in an e-mail to Hernando Today two days prior to graduation. "I decided I would write out my anger in my new speech, in a sort of satirical irony ... Though I knew that my class would never get to hear the original, it still gave me a small dose of satisfaction to sneak all of that in there."

Lugo, who will be enrolling at Harvard this fall, gave her word she would read her revised speech. That didn't mean her heart would be in it.

"That speech will not be my voice," she said on Wednesday.

She complained it was a textbook speech. She gave it a textbook reading.

Lugo's smile was effortless. Her eyes mostly stayed on the top of the podium, but she occasionally glanced toward her classmates.

After Lugo finished her speech and as she walked back to her seat, Springstead Principal Susan Duval whispered something into her ear.

It was a friendly exchange. Lugo smiled and nodded her head.

She declined an interview prior to the ceremony. She said she was too nervous.

"You have scaled the mountain, overcome the obstacles, won the game," she told her classmates near the end of her valedictory address. "However, in 30 years, when you look back at this moment, it will be nothing more than a distant memory, shrouded in foggy details and forgotten quotes."