As a closing assignment, my AP lit teacher had everyone write a graduation speech and present it to the class. I didn't end up trying out, but I'm proud of it, so I'll post it here for you to enjoy. There's some rah-rah-go silverwolves stuff that doesn't apply to you, but bear with me.
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Graduation Speech
Senior year is an odd stretch of
life because we're supposed to live in three times simultaneously. The
past. We're still wallowing in a lot of the same ruts we fell into
sophomore year. But it's not all bad-we're also reliving our greatest hits.
There are times I'm walking across the Commons, slipping in between these
scrawny girls who could fit into lockers and boys who could pass as teachers if
the mood strikes them, nothing on my mind but getting out to my car before the
parking lot gets congested, and then it hits me. I have a car. Shouldn't I be, like, eleven now?
Then there's the present. Our last
chance to do everything is now. Join a club, go to prom, write crappy chemistry
essays at three A.M. But while we're trying to do all that, we've got college
applications and scholarships and trying to find jobs.
And now for the big one. The future.
All our lives, we've been told that we don't live in the real world. We've said
it ourselves-"Nobody uses quadratics in the real world. What's the point
of math if the most we do after high school is calculating a tip?" But to
tell you the truth, you're already living real lives. Adolescence is a saga,
not the prologue to the rest of your life. The world you live in right now is
no less valid because you're a teenager. Tomorrow looks a lot like today. The
problems and passions you have at eighteen are things you'll carry with you for
the rest of your life. So are the people. More than half of Americans age
twenty five or older live within fifty miles of their birthplace. So sorry, you
probably are going to run into your ex and backstabbing friends.
In the media, high school is either
this fluffy, happy experience where we float from football games to prom night,
or a gritty day-by-day struggle. If I've learned anything in high school, it's
that no life is all one thing. Maybe you'll remember high school for the year
you walked through the valley of the shadow of death, or maybe you'll only
recall your highlights reel from the next year, but both happened. You can't
help clinging to the past. Nostalgia will never bring your best days back, but
reminiscing over your good times will do more for you than reliving your worst
moments over and over again. I said the passions and problems you have in high
school will stay with you for the rest of your life. That's true, but it's also
true that you are also the master of your own memory. You don't get to choose everything
that happens in your life but you decide which pieces to hold onto. So what do
you want to be? There are different truths for different people. Do you want to
move forward and laugh in the face of the future? Do you want to hold onto the
days where you watched your world burn down around you, because those flames
turned out to be the refiner's fire and you rose like a phoenix from the ashes?
Find your right answer and learn to live with it.
I've lived in Riverton since I was
born. I've known some of you since kindergarten, and some of you I never got to
know at all. Some of you have full ride scholarships. Some of you barely
scraped by and you see no future beyond the entry level job you have now. But
that doesn't matter. Not yet. You graduated high school and that is something
no one will ever be able to take away from you. It was hard for you, and it was
hard for all the supposedly perfect people you think surround you. Everyone has
an invisible struggle.
When you were six, adults asked you
what you wanted to be when you grew up, and you had a different answer every
week. Astronaut! Ballerina! President! When you were twelve, you had more
"grown up" answers. Dentist! Librarian! Doctor-lawyer-engineer! Then
you're sixteen, and you're supposed to have this bullet point list of how
you're going to get your perfect job, pay off your student loans, and save for
retirement all at the same time. Then you ditch it two years later because
you're eighteen, on the threshold of adulthood, and it's finally dawned on you
that you have no idea where you're going. Most of us won't live out our
childhood dreams. We'll be marketing directors and human resource managers
instead of astronaut ballerinas. But I've got news for you: you will not be a job when you grow up. You will do a job. Life is so much more than just a career.
You will do different things over the course of your life. Missionary,
college student, working man, mother-but the only thing you will ever be is yourself, and high school prepared
you for that better than you think. You've learned to feel comfortable in your
own skin. You've learned to march to your own beat while fitting into the
rhythms of life. You've learned to "keep your head when all about you are
losing theirs and blaming it on you." You've learned to be the hero of
your own story.
Or maybe you haven't yet, and that's
just fine, because your twenties are for figuring life out, and you're not even
there yet. Don't let anyone tell you life is short. Living is the longest thing
you'll ever do.
The historian Bernad Berenson said, "I would, if I could, stand on a
busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people throw me their wasted hours." Time
is worth far more than money. The clock's still ticking but the time's not up.
You've got a hundred years to live, or maybe less, doesn't matter, because you
live life in the present tense.
You
probably think you've accomplished so much less in your high school life than
everybody around you. But there are six hundred and fifty people around you
thinking the exact same thing. I can't tell you how many times I've fallen into
that trap, and I'm an AP student, Sterling Scholar, and I joined somewhere
between six and nine extracurriculars this year. I've lost count. However
you've measured your life in the past, I want you to look back and think about
what you have done, and how much is
still left to do. Wherever you go from now, whoever you decide to be, do something with your life. Raise a
child, write a novel, fight a battle, let the world know you were here-but
don't spend so much time in the world that you forget how to be you. It's a
tricky balance, but you'll find it eventually.
Everyone
talks about graduation like it's the end of an era. False. Remember that theme song they
piped through the hallways every single day sophomore year? It's time to begin,
isn't it? You've come so far and you'll go farther still. You did it,
Silverwolves. So hold your head up and walk like you know what you're worth.
You conquered high school-you can do anything.
I like it!
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