Commencement Speeches - Natalie Block

Natalie Block - Salutatorian Speech

        Good evening and welcome to all the administrators, staff, family, and friends who have gathered here to celebrate the culmination of our collective achievements. Congratulations to all of my fellow graduates – we did it. We passed the 225! Yeah! I am honored to stand before you today as a representative of the LIBI Class of 2010, and on your behalf I will take a moment and thank all of the people in our lives whose faith in us never wavered. Some of you may cringe at my use of the word faith, but I am not here to preach to you. I use the word faith because it represents inner strength, a necessary skill that we all have shown to acquire in arriving here today. We know that luck or chance had no part in helping us achieve our goals: only strength, determination, and inner strength have the power to do that. We are the faithful who never gave up. We are the faithful who never stopped believing in ourselves. We are the faithful that set goals for ourselves and had the courage to take the necessary steps to achieve those goals. Now it is time to take that faith - inner strength and build on its power as we join a group of very uniquely skilled professional individuals known as court reporters.

Today we celebrate the accomplishment of passing all of our tests with a proficiency rate of 95% or better, and we will use the strong work ethics we have built to go out and become successful professionals.

While many graduates today face the prospect of the unknown when they leave their schools, we – the faithful - can be confident that our career choice was the right choice, and all our preparation was not in vain due to the fact the court reporting profession was listed in the Bureau of Labor Statistics to be one of the fastest growing professions today, with an estimated growth rate of 25% by the year 2016. Let’s go graduates, get your fingers moving and make that money!

Our strength, determination, and faith in ourselves to complete the mission would not have been achieved without the aid of our deeply devoted staff of teachers and administrators who were always available to aid us. Although, I cannot individually mention all the wonderful teachers we have at LIBI, I would like to share with you some of the personal experiences that I have had:

My first teacher was Ms. Sumner, who is also known as the Case Catalyst Queen because she knows every minute detail about the Case Catalyst program, but she is not limited to that; she excels in her knowledge of everything necessary to be a proficient writer. Her guidance is what enables the student to build a secure foundation of work ethics essential to becoming a successful reporter.

Another familiar face to all of us is Mrs. Magarelli, aka court reporter, mother and part-time dancer. A lot of the students will enter her Transcription Production classroom thinking “this is going to be so easy; everyone knows how to punctuate a sentence, right?” But you quickly learn there is much more to know about editing a transcript for it to be done correctly. With her unique teaching methods, she accomplishes this, leaving the student fully equipped to appropriately punctuate with a comma or a dash. But tell me, when did they stop writing alright as one word?

As we move through the speed classes we are always waiting with anticipation the day we finally enter the 160-180 class. This is the class where, for some unknown reason, many seem to get stuck; and the teacher of this class needs to be creative, innovative, and encouraging to keep the student moving on. One of those teachers is Mrs. Dellecamelie, who between running a household – possibly two, raising a teenager with raging hormones and a toddler that loves to ride the trains, still finds the time to devote countless hours to her students even after they have left her classroom.

Finally, we reach the end, the finish line, the coveted 225 class. Ahhh,… a sigh of relief as we enter this class, but that doesn’t mean we have any time to slow down. Absolutely not as we quickly discover there is a huge difference between 180, 200, and 225 and are once again calling upon our inner strength, dedication, and devotion, to guide us to the finish line. To aid us on this journey we are met by Mr. Gennaro and Mrs. Santucci, who are themselves working reporters and have a plethora of knowledge they share with the students.

We certainly have worked really hard perfecting our speed and accuracy, but let’s not forget that in addition to learning a new language with a 95% rate of proficiency at the speed of 225 words per minute, we have also acquired a well-rounded background of academics. One of those classes would be the Internship class, and I am confident this would be a favorite choice for all of the students. Ms. Rizzo and Mrs. Fevola - both successful working reporters, teach this class. I had the pleasure of being taught by Mrs. Fevola who I will refer to as “the icing on the cake” because she combines all the skills we have achieved thus far into a mix, blending and molding, and the end result being a recipe for success. You can’t help but to be drawn by her enthusiasm for the profession, and her sense of commitment to the student.

All along I have been speaking of inner strength and the gift that brings when we pull from it, but I will now share with you a moment of weakness that I had when I started the program as it relates to the devotion of our teachers to push us to reach our goals. My biggest fear was taking the medical terminology class because it requires gaining a whole new level of knowledge, and I just didn’t think I would be up to the challenge; that is until I met Mrs. Cooper. She uses her pharmaceutical experience to convey the message that this information will open doors for us as we begin our journey into the workforce, and I eagerly awaited the new knowledge that I would gain each week. She taught me, and I know many of you, to believe in ourselves and we will gain strength and be rewarded for that newly gained knowledge.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the devoted presence that seems to be in our school, both day and night, and that presence would be Ms. Houston. She is not only Campus Director, she currently maintains a teaching position in the school; and to this day continues to have an “open door policy” for all the students, while completing all of her other duties. I know I speak for all of the graduates when I say that Ms. Houston is truly devoted to the achievement of success for all of her students, and we are grateful and fortunate to have her presence.

For each of us, there are people in our personal lives that supported us through our struggles to reach this accolade today, and I join you in thanking them for their love and faith. I know that without the love and support of my husband and children and their unwavering belief in me, I would not be standing here before you today. I will leave you with a hearty good luck and best wishes to all.