As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” Because of you, Dylan, we have learned and we have grown, not only as individuals, but as an ensemble, as well. We have laughed, we have cried; we all did it together. We fell apart and we bulit ourselves back up, together. Because of you, Dylan, we were able to become leaders. We were able to set the highest of goals for ourselves, our ensemble, and our community. We were able to achieve those goals, no matter how impossible they might have seemed; goals that we’d set in order to be better people, goals that help us contribute more to the world around us. Because of you, we have all found our qualities about ourselves that we wouldn’t otherwise have discovered: Sarah has more confidence than she did when she came in, I am able to believe in myself, and Everett is the dad of the pit, all things that we have learned from you. Because of you, we have realized how much talent we all have and what it's like be apart of something wonderful.

So, Dylan, on behalf of everyone that you have made leaders out of, I thank you. Thank you for believing in each and every one of us, when we didn’t believe in ourselves. Thank you for being patient with us when we blew attacks, or didn’t memorize the music right away; for leading us away from that which makes us most comfortable and leading us into worlds of wonder we have never known. Thank you for teaching us how to have a deep love for chocolate milk. Thank you for wiping all of our tears away with words of comfort, and thank you for never letting us give up on ourselves or on our ensemble. Thank you for never letting us down, even when we doubted you; thank you for creating us into so much more than what we were able to see in ourselves. Thank you for taking on this extremely difficult task years ago and thank you for making it look like a piece of cake. Thank you for being our leader, our best friend; our brother. For that, and so much more, Dylan, thank you.

We love you.