Every student has their story as Dunn School graduates 28 in the Class of 2025
Dunn, the private school in Los Olivos, is destination at the end of many fascinating paths, and promises to be the start of other fascinating paths taken by students and graduates. Bich (Wainzie) Nguyen is a prime example.
Nguyen was born in Vietnam and was going to high school there when she went to a “study abroad” high school fair, and when she found out about Dunn through the agency handling foreign students and researched it a little more, she knew this was the place for her. And according to Dunn’s Chad Stacy, director of the school’s Robert W. Jurgensen Entrepreneurship Program, she didn’t take no for an answer.
“You sought out Dunn. You sought out the Jurgensen program. You even grabbed [Director of Admissions] Mike McKee by the lapels and said ‘I have to come here; I have to come here now!'” Stacy said. “And then you did the same to your parents.”
Stacy told this anecdote while addressing Nguyen in front of an audience at Dunn’s Upper School Commencement. Nguyen was one of 28 students making up the Class of 2025.
A handing out of diplomas at a Dunn commencement consists of a faculty member of each graduate’s choice making a short (officially about 45 seconds) explaining the student’s impact on the school, or what make him or her special to the campus. For instance, a chance for Stacy to explain how Nguyen is, despite her quiet deamanor, “bold, fearless, and a generational game-changer.”
It’s a fashion that elicits a lot of good stories, like Nyuol Aguek’s “journey filled with challenges” from Kenya that brought him to Dunn, as told by Dean of Student Kelsey Sullivan.
Or biology teacher and Loy House head Melissa Escalante admiring Lily Wolter-Brezine as someone “who at any given moment will burst into song.” (Appropriate since Wolter-Brezine was the vocalist for the band hat did a musical performance during the program).
Or basketball and track coach and senior dorm head Esron Gates talking about on a morning group run when he decided to slow the pace, and heard Nojus Magelinskas remarking to him “Hey, Mr. Gates, you’re slowing down, like an old man, you have to keep it up,” and said he was a great coach and leader on the court.
An then there was Melia Collins-Byrd, the lone student speaker on the day, cited a a post-apocalyptic novel titled “Station 11” that Dunn student read this year. It’s about a society that’s crippled by a flu that wipes out most of the population, but a character expresses the idea that everything happens for a reason, an idea that permeates throughout the book.
“That got me to thinking about us and how life is like a book: Some chapters you keep re-reading, and others you couldn’t flip past fast enough,” Collins-Byrd said. “Then there are characters you never expected to matter, but you end up meeting the most.”
“But we did write this together at this tiny school in this little town called Los Olivos from places from all over the world,” she continued. “Somehow, out of the infinite possibilities, all 28 of us ended up here experiencing the same chaotic experience in four years of high school.”
And in what’s becoming a staple for Dunn commencement, Head of School Kalyan Balaven offered up another poetry reading enscapsulating the ending year at the school, only this year it was the dreams of his students submitted the week before. He also noted that the term “Pincer Pride” at Dunn may be correct because the school’s mascot is the Earwig, but “Pincher Pride” may be correct because dreams are what make you want to pinch yourself.
“Pincher pride; where dreams reside. So pinch me I’m dreaming from a dream deep inside” was the recurring stanza with references drawing jolts of recognition from the students who shared their “dreams.”
“You delicately dance with the fabric of your dream refined; entertwined with your grace and mind to become on with fashion design,” must have drawn a smile from Kadence Freed, who started sewing masks in the seventh grade in the midst of COVID, and now is headed to the Arizona State University Fashion Institute (which is actually in Los Angeles) with hopes of being a designer and/or owning her own brand.
“Crack of the bat, from batting cages to the fact you remain our class act to no cap: A major-league contract,” definitely reminded everyone of Theo Anderson, the highly regarded prospect for the Earwigs baseball team who will be playing for the Utah Marshals summer-league team and starting college ball with St. Mary’s College next year.
And then there was “And she is Tony Dunn true, because she dreams to build a school in Vietnam and give back to prove that she can bring the whole student into view,” circling back to Wainzie Nguyen, who is headed to UC Irvine to study business with an education minor, with aspirations to follow in the footsteps of her school’s founder and open her own school in Vietnam.
“I want to open it for the kids who can’t go abroad but they want to have this kind of school,” she said. “Hopefully I can do it one day.”
Whatever paths they may take, congratulations to all the Dunn graduates.
