Hello everyone, and thank you for coming out to celebrate the accomplishments of the Fall 2010 graduating class of the UH Paralegal Studies Program.

It has been a long, but rewarding 8 weeks for the students in this class. We came together from different backgrounds and we came together for many different reasons.  But our goal was the same:  To become a paralegal.

We were told from the beginning, that it would be tough and that to be successful in this class, we would need to put aside our personal lives, as well as give up any free time.  Surely not, we thought.  We believed we would file into class every Saturday and Sunday for 8 weeks and voila! -- magically, we’d earn a certificate and become a paralegal.  Boy, were we wrong!  We didn’t know how much we didn’t know, but Jac took care of that. 

We found out that we had been using the word “hopefully” incorrectly.  And that “literally,” really does mean “literally,” and it shouldn’t be used any other way.  We have memorized the names of the 9 Supreme Court Justices, and we “definitely” know the definition of hearsay.

The demands of this class have taken up most of our time for the past eight weeks.  To all of our families and friends, we thank you for your support.  We had no idea how much this course would consume us. We couldn’t have done it without your help and understanding! 

Fellow classmates:  We did it!  We survived Jac!  We appreciated each others help and encouragement in so many ways over these past weeks.  Just knowing that we were all hunkered down in the trenches together, and knowing we weren’t alone in this, was oddly comforting. We encouraged each other to persevere.  We laughed and we cried, but most importantly, we survived.

And Jac.  We all thank you so much for being you.  You were relentless in getting your points across and in shoehorning massive amounts of information into our brains!  All of us were shell shocked at the beginning, but we grew to know what you were expecting from us, which turned out to be more that we were expecting from ourselves. We learned to listen, which we will need to do in our new careers as paralegals.  Words are important.  We learned to dot every i and cross every t, because in the real world, that is what will be expected of us.  We learned that we can exceed expectations instead of merely just “meeting” expectations.  We learned to be aware of the world around us -- to know current events, to know our world leaders, and to know who the leaders of this country are, because it is important that we know this.   We appreciated listening to all of the interesting guest speakers that you had come to speak to us.  Your sense of humor is what got us through!  We appreciate all that you taught us and we are thankful that you pushed us to be the very best we can be.  Thank you, Jac!

I want to congratulate all of the graduates and I wish each of you the very best of luck in your new endeavor!  This is the class that Jac built!

 -- Lori Busch, Valedictorian