Senior Speech: What Is High School?
Graduation speakers love invoking metaphors to describe their high school experience. High school is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book! Or a game of Monopoly! High school is like the Starbucks menu! High school is like a layer cake! High school is like yogurt, and senior year is the fruit on the bottom! You’ve all heard those speeches, but high school is none of those things. What is high school, really? It’s not a board game or a flowing river of time, it’s not even the 3,980 hours the state of Massachusetts makes us spend in a classroom over four years. It’s the friends we make and the fights we get in, the teachers who drive us to excellence and drive us crazy, the thousands of touching or sad or just plain weird moments we witness in this city of two thousand people. So, Class of 2009, when you look back: what will you remember?
For me, high school is the smell of freshly waxed hallways on the first day back from break. High school is how huge the seniors seem when you’re a freshman, and how sure you are that no one you know will grow up to be that big. High school is Sorrento’s during lunch periods. High school is the first time you drive on 495 and you realize that you can go anywhere. High school is Friday nights on Leary Field, and comm ed basketball on Saturday afternoon, and speedball on a Tuesday morning.
High school is wading through snow to your bus stop, cursing Bill Ryan. High school is waking up to a snow day and loving Bill Ryan with every fiber of your being. High school is the moment when you walk out of the SAT’s and can’t decide if you’re incredibly relieved or if you need to throw up. High school is wordless high fives in the hallway, and high school is finding some freshman wiping away tears in the bathroom and wanting to promise: it will get better, whatever it is.
High school is falling asleep in the quiet commons. High school is falling asleep in math class. And in history class. And at your kitchen table at four P.M., and on your keyboard at two A.M. High school is waking up when it’s still dark out and driving home when it’s dark again. High school is the constant mental to-do list: fill out the Spanish worksheet, start that English paper, read a chapter for history, study the quadratic equation, find gym clothes, don’t forget to eat lunch.
High school is 2:18 in May, when you walk outside and the air smells like summer, and you know you’re not doing any homework today. High school is driving home from a night in Boston, with the stars over Route 2 and the car full of your sleeping friends. High school is the 4th of July at NARA, shivering on top of the hill, waiting for the fireworks. High school is an Indian summer afternoon lying on the grass in the arboretum, lulled to sleep by the sun on your face and your friends’ voices around you, wondering if there is anything more perfect than this day.
On this day that we’ve waited and worked for, I’m in no position to give any of you guidance. I grew up with the people in this class- how can I bestow wisdom upon you when I am one of you? I’ve known Tracey Pavan since I was six months old. I went to preschool with Tim Cadogan and Sadie Gordon. I played dinosaurs with Patrick Murray. I remember the day in kindergarten when Zach Weitzner got his glasses. I remember gluing bees on a stick in second-grade science with Rob Ruggerio, and the first day of fourth grade when Jen Brogie sat down next to me. I’ve played capture the flag in Kevin Merrigan’s backyard.
I don’t know the secret to happiness any more than the rest of you do. What I do know, however, is that the people in this class are driven and caring and hilarious and too smart for our own good. I know that you can handle anything the world throws at you, and that you are capable of more than you ever dreamed.
The one thing I can tell you is to do what makes you happy. Do whatever excites you, and do everything you’re afraid of. Our world may seem to revolve around the cruel trio of money, power and fame, but forget them. Money is easily lost, power is swift to corrupt, and fame, as you’ve heard, is fleeting. If you feel the universe wants you to grow organic rhubarb, then grow organic rhubarb! If you want to move to Venezuela and vaccinate orphans, or if you just want to move out of Acton- don’t let anything stop you.
This is your life you are embarking upon today, and because I don’t have wise words of my own to guide you, I am borrowing some I feel are appropriate for a class that can communicate completely in movie quotes. To paraphrase Dwayne from the film Little Miss Sunshine, “Do what you love, and screw the rest.”
Congratulations and good luck.
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