POLAND — There was barely a seat to be had in the gymnasium of Poland Regional High School on Sunday afternoon as hundreds packed the bleachers and available floor seats to send off 119 graduating seniors.

“Today marks the end of our high school years and childhood and the beginning of our adult lives,” valedictorian Jacob Moody told his classmates. “If you’ve chosen to spend your time working towards something that means something to you, then you’ve chosen wisely.”

Moody talked of how choices faced by the graduating seniors will no longer be as simple as what to wear to school or whether or not to have fries with lunch. Rather, as they move forward in life, they will need to carefully consider the decisions they make today and the implications those decisions will have on their futures.

“I’m really excited for his future,” mom Julie Carlson said of her graduating son, Richard. “I’m so thrilled for his opportunities. He’s happy for this to come to an end and start the next chapter of his life.”

The 18-year-old will be moving to Bangor to pursue a career in audio engineering. Carlson said she expects empty nest syndrome will set in once her youngest child leaves for college, but knows that his generation wants to explore the world.

She just hopes he returns one day.

“They want to travel and see the world and that’s what I love — their energy for that,” Carlson said of her son’s generation. “I left my roots in the Northeast and came back.”

A short time later, Richard Carlson and 118 other classmates got the same message loud and clear from commencement speak Yellow Light Breen, senior vice president and chief strategic officer for Bangor Saving Bank. Breen, who chairs the Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education, pointedly told the Class of 2011 to leave.

But, he urged, please return to Maine in order to lead the state into the future. The Harvard Law School alumnus and former editor of the Harvard Law Review used his own life experiences growing up in rural Maine as an example of setting goals, achieving them and then paying it forward by helping the next generation discover their own path in life.

“I think what got me to Harvard was the support of my parents and family,” Breen explained. “We had no electric, no television and no money. And even though we had no money for clothes, we always had money for books.”

Breen told the graduates that he understood early on that college – especially Harvard – was not something he was going to be entitled to. It simply wasn’t an option his parents could afford. However, it was a goal he set out to achieve and realized that hard work was the path that would take him there.

Later in his commencement speech, Breen spoke of why he returned to Maine. He urged graduates to follow his lead and that of others across the state who left home, traveled, went to college, saw the world and then returned to Maine armed with ideas and knowledge to help shape the state’s future.

“Just because you’re small town doesn’t mean you’re small time,” Breen told the seniors. “So, in the end, maybe life really is like ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ Because in the end, there is no place like home. There really is no place like home.”