North Shore Country Day Celebrates Class Of 2024, Including 8 'Lifers'

WINNETKA, IL — Graduating high school seniors at North Shore Country Day selected a longtime college counselor to deliver commencement address to the class of 2024, which included eight members who had been together since kindergarten at the K-12 Winnetka private school before receiving their diplomas at a ceremony Friday.

Kristen Kaczynski, known to students as Dr. K, is now the director of strategic initiatives and special projects at the school. During her remarks to graduating seniors, she discussed how to approach difficult things, describing her efforts to complete a marathon as one of the hardest things that she had ever done.

“One thing you can count on as you leave this place is that, at some point, there is going to be more that is hard,” Kaczynski said. “Yet I’m also confident that as you face those challenges — no matter what they are — you leave here incredibly well prepared to lean towards elegance and grace.”

Tom Flemma, the head of school, cited advice from comedian Steve Martin to young people seeking to succeed in show business: "Be so good they can't ignore you." Flemma said it represents what is expected from recent North Shore Country Day graduates.

“You see, I recognize in Steve’s advice multiple truths, and perhaps a duality that he didn’t intend," Flemma said, encouraging the students to be "good" in so multiple senses of the word — not just excellent but also kind.

“If your time here at North Shore has done just a bit to instill a reflexive inclination to ‘Live and Serve’ in you, then we have done our job," he said.

---

The senior class message was delivered by Leif Steele, of Evanston, one of the eight "lifers" who have spent the last 13 or 14 years together at the school. Steele described an experience where he nearly drowned during a canoeing vacation.

“Our world, not unlike a whitewater rapid, is dynamic and unpredictable and at times frightening,” Steele said. “The best way to maximize our wellbeing is to neutralize our ego. Go into every situation with no concrete expectations of what should and shouldn’t happen. Embrace what is happening, live it and thrive in it.”

Following the ceremony, the graduates sang the school song before the Steele and the seven other "lifers" — Tessa Adamson-Tate of Skokie, Aram Dombalagian of Glenview, Carissa Shultz of Lake Forest, Bo Stevenson of Winnetka, and Geoff, Mariel Flickinger and Smith Flickinger of Winnetka — lowered the flags and rang the school bell one by one.