Ellen Llacsa felt excited to celebrate the end of high school. Petra Anderson thought about how she will miss her teammates. Benjamin Parker saw plenty of people he’d gotten to know.
They lined up, creating a huge mass of navy-colored caps and gowns. As they waited to walk through the single security line into the gym, the graduates professed a mixture of excitement and anxiety for their big day.
The gym connected to Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston, where the grads soon proceeded for the Class of 2026 commencement ceremony of Glenbrook South High School, in Glenview, on Saturday evening, May 23.
“It’s cool to be surrounded by all my friends I’ve known for four years,” Parker said. “You go into high school knowing no one, pretty much, and you come out of it with a bunch of friends, so it’s cool to see everyone around and see all the familiar faces.”
Not that the nerves didn’t get to him. Sort of. “I’m excited nervous,” Parker said.
After graduation, he plans to study sports broadcasting at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The graduates’ families, meanwhile, filled up the area as a student choir sang from the stage. Then a video display played a flashback video that ended with the seniors “signing off” by signing their names, to the tune of Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).”
Soon, the graduates filed into the arena, some spotting their families and waving at the audience, while others marveled when their faces appeared on the video display terminal above them.
Brendan Gomez, Glenbrook South’s student body president, kicked off the speeches with a brief address sprinkled with jokes.
“Let’s talk about freshman year, which was fire, if you get what I’m saying,” Gomez said. A fire started in the school’s wood shop in May 2023, an event that Gomez turned into a parable for adjusting to the unexpected.
Principal Barbara Georges, too, spoke of being “ready for the unpredictable future” and extolled “Titan values” that could propel the graduates to become global leaders.
In his brief remarks, District 225 Superintendent R.J. Gravel told them that they would forever remain part of the “Titan family.”
Then, row by row, the graduates made their way toward the stage to receive their diplomas, a process that took more than an hour. As the final graduate got his, the arena erupted in cheers, and after a final announcement by Georges, the Class of 2026 tossed their caps into the air.
Seven hundred eighty-seven students graduated.
One of them, Anna Chyzh, said she wasn’t nervous whatsoever as she lined up before commencement. Chyzh plans to study in Madrid.
“I’ll miss my friends here, and that’s about it,” she said.
Peter Gadjev, however, didn’t dismiss Glenview too easily. He’s excited to move to the nation’s capital for George Washington University.
But he’ll admit a certain sadness.
“This is the only place I’ve known for a while,” Gadjev said.
