Goodbyes, Part Two

It seems like graduation should feel different, exceptional. I mostly felt normal.

It was just like everything else our school ever did. It was slightly chaotic and unorganized, but ended in something beautiful, even if it was only beautiful to us. School board officials gave slightly forced speeches, the superintendent gave a genuine one, and students demonstrated why we deserved rented ferns at our graduation. It did represent our school as best as a few short hours could.

But I felt pretty normal. I didn't feel like I was moving from a high school (and college) student to a high school (and college) graduate. I just felt like I was sitting in a gym floor wearing a silly outfit with some friends. Even walking across the stage still seemed like a rehearsal; I couldn't possibly be doing it for real. Maybe we spent too much nostalgia throughout the years to really summon up the emotion on this typically monumental day.

There were really only small, isolated moments where I felt something greater than what I feel every day.

The first came when we walked in and I first saw how many people were occupying the gym's bleachers, packed in like sardines, snapping pictures like paparazzi (fanatical, proud parents are probably the only photographers in the world scarier than paparazzi). I thought how wonderful it was to see all of the people I'd never have to explain what my school was or how I came to this place in my education to in one room. They all just understood; they knew the magnitude of our accomplishments without belabored explanation and questions. They just clapped. I felt happy, but I didn't feel graduated.

The second came while I was reading my short, inconsequential speech. Most of the time, I was just terrified. I didn't look up into the crowd because I had to read and concentrate on keeping my voice from breaking. But then I got to a feeble joke all my classmates would understand and I heard a few tiny laughs from them. Before, it felt like I was just speaking to the wall out of obligation, but then I realized people were actually listening. That sort of sums up all of my high school graduation--sometimes it didn't seem like it, but people were listening. I felt proud, but I didn't feel graduated.

Next, skip to the end of the ceremony. The principal "by the power bestowed upon her by Surry County Schools" or something like that pronounced us graduated, and we turned our tassels. Excitement bubbled up inside me, the kind of excitement that is rare and raw and can't be replicated. I looked around at the cardboard topped faces smiling in rows and knew they felt much the same.

In that one singular moment did I feel truly graduated.

I could post forever about all the little moments and exceptional people that made my school so wonderful, but it just seems unnecessary. I may be graduated, but a little part of me will always be sitting in the T-building waiting for school to start.

Pomp and Circumstance

Graduations are weird. Even though I was partially participating in the event, I couldn't help but wonder why it was such a celebrated "accomplishment" to have attended school, a compulsory thing. You're pretty much expected to pass all the way through, and then you get to the end, and people act like it's some great feat. Almost everybody who started out finished. Woohoo? I guess I'm being too cynical.

The whole thing just seemed to really lack real sentiment. All five of the students who spoke said almost exactly the same thing, most of which I consider to be hardly true. They all used the over tired "just four years ago we walked into this gym as freshmen, and now we're here as graduates" device, and then said how the school had taught them all it's okay to be unique. (Nevermind the traditional practice of them all wearing identical graduation robes, which I understand, but find ironic.) I know most of those people in some capacity, and I'm in high school, and being unique is the last thing they cherish. They all listed the same accomplishments, and the people who got cheers from the audience members were hardly those who chose to "walk their own path." Again, with the cynicism, but it just seemed like one big show that didn't nearly reflect the experience that those people actually had.

The administrators sounded bored (one of them kind of angry), and a few even let the softness of preferential treatment and partiality taint their voice as they called each student across the stage. That was perhaps the most honest moment in the whole thing.

They promise great things for the class of 2010. In my head, I'm thinking half of them will hate college and drop out, some will stick with it even though they realize they picked the wrong major halfway through, and a select few may actually love their college experience and the subsequent job. The chances of any of them changing the world? Slim to none. It's just semantics that nobody believes but everybody has to say.

They'll all land somewhere and I hope the majority of them will be happy. I hope standing in that crowded gym wasn't the the happiest they'll ever be, and I hope holding that diploma isn't their highest accomplishment in life. That's what they should be wishing upon the robed masses at graduations--I hope this isn't it. I hope you do something beyond get through high school. Your track team's going to state your Senior year should not be what you're talking about in ten years as the best moment of your life. They should just hope that they go far beyond the "realizing that it's okay to be yourself" lie they kept repeating.

Most of all, graduation made me grateful I chose my school and grateful that all the tearful accomplishments we name at our graduation won't be lies, and that I will sit among people I admire instead of tolerate. I found where I'd be in the line-up and smiled at my preferred seat in the bleachers. A good decision can never be reinforced too many times.

I also just realized that they didn't throw their hats. In what kind of graduation do they not throw their hats?