Actor and comedian Lauren Lapkus told Evanston Township High School seniors to celebrate their “weirdness” at her Sunday commencement address.

“The things that make you weird now are the things that will make you a cool, interesting person as you get older,” said Lapkus, who graduated from ETHS in 2004. “And if you’re already cool in high school, then I’m legit scared of you.”

More than 800 ETHS seniors received their diplomas at the commencement ceremony, held at Northwestern’s Welsh-Ryan Arena.

After attending DePaul University Lapkus broke out with her role in “Orange is the New Black,” which earned her a Screen Actors Guild award. She later appeared in “The Big Bang Theory” and “Jurassic World.”

At ETHS, Lapkus was an editor at The Evanstonian, the school’s newspaper, and performed and produced for YAMO, a student-run sketch comedy and variety show, where she said she found her love for improv.

“Improv teaches us that we already have the answers,” Lapkus said. “And what I mean by that is that your gut knows the right thing to do. Trust that little voice inside of you that knows what’s right and what’s wrong.”

She told the crowd they had a “leg up” as natives of Evanston, which she called “the ideal place to grow up.” In particular, she said, the city supports “artists and diversity and inclusion and social justice.”

Theater director Aaron Carney, who taught Lapkus as a high schooler and encouraged Lapkus to take improv classes in Chicago, presented her with an ETHS swag bag that included posters and a YAMO T-shirt after she delivered her speech.

ETHS graduated senior Jackson Stroth delivered a student address focused on the history of ETHS and the people who shaped his time there.

The school originated as a one-room high school, and its first graduating class in 1876 had only two students.

“Most of the town thought it was a waste of taxpayer money,” Stroth said. “Students called their classroom a ‘miserable shanty.’ One hundred forty-three years later, this school has 3,700 students, 35 state championships, a planetarium, a greenhouse and an atrium.”

Stroth cited educators and students who he said defined ETHS, such as wellness teacher Montell Wilburn, who performed rap songs encouraging students to avoid drug use, and Superintendent Marcus Campbell and Associate Principal of Educational Services Keith Robinson, whom he called “twin forces of accountability.” 

Stroth also mentioned standout students, including a perfect ACT scorer, a “Hadestown” performer headed to Harvard and a lifeguard who saved a woman’s life.

“At this school, I learned that we are surrounded by people who can change the trajectory of our lives: teachers, coaches, families and classmates who chose to invest in us,” Stroth said.

ETHS graduated senior Isaiah Romero, who was selected as the school’s senior poet, recited a poem about the significance of the school’s colors: orange and blue.

“Orange has represented every loud moment: the games, the energy, the nights we felt unstoppable, like the world was already ours,” Romero said. “Blue has represented everything quieter: the stress, the growth, the nights we doubted but kept going anyway. And now we wear both, not just as colors, but as proof.”

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