At graduation, remember the little man on campus

It’s commencement time and all over the country high school seniors are making speeches. They’re speaking of the times they’ve had with their classmates – the times they’ll never forget. They’re remembering fondly the homecoming dance and the big game.

They’re telling of the day they arrived as terrified freshmen and how they’re leaving proud graduates. They’re waxing poetic about the rivalries and the rallies, about the parties and the proms. And one of them is undoubtedly saying, “Those were the times of our lives.” And out from under their mortar boards many of their classmates are mumbling under their breath, “God, I hope not.”

I taught high school for four years and I saw a lot of students who were just biding their time. They were working just hard enough for the “A” or “B” their parents expected of them or they needed to get into the college of their choice, but they were clearly not having the times of their lives.

The best of those students would carve out a niche for themselves in the art department or the band that would make the rest of the stuff bearable. But others were just plain miserable for four years. And many of them seemed to think their entire life would be like that – not fitting in, not caring about what the rest of the crowd did or thought and not seeing their contribution to the school as important.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2016, most of you graduating today can be easily divided into two categories – those of you who see today as an ending and those for whom it is a beginning. For the fortunate few among you, it is both.

For those of you in the first group, high school was a four-year Sarah Michelle Gellar/Freddie Prinze Jr. (or whoever the current teens are) movie. The clothes were hip, the people were pretty and the problems were superficial but seemed important at the time. These people were the prom queens, the football captains and the student body president. For those in the second group, you’re through with the adolescent posturing and the popularity contests. While there might have been some good times and some good friends, the four years could have just as easily been two and you’d have been just as happy. Perhaps that’s the vast majority of the class.

For every big man on campus there are a dozen “little” ones who made him feel large by comparison. They may have been smaller is stature or in the eyes of the “in” crowd, but in 20 years many of the big men will be working for their smaller classmates. For every homecoming queen there are dozens of girls who would rather do their homework than their hair.

It’s important to remember that 20 percent of a high school’s population appears in 80 percent of the pictures in the yearbook and vice versa. For many of these people, high school was one of the highlights of their lives. They were popular, successful and admired. Many of them will go on to be all of those things. But for others, it’s down hill from here.

Many of the students from that other 80 percent will go on to be popular, successful and admired. For some it will happen in college, for others it will take place in their careers. Some of the skills required to be a successful high school student – compliance, a willingness to play by the rules or the ability to throw a football, shoot a basketball or look cute in a cheerleader’s skirt – are not necessarily the skills required to make a good adult or even a good college student.

To put it another way, some of the traits that make for an unsuccessful high school students – creativity, restlessness, the questioning of authority and convention – become more valuable down the road.

I write this not to belittle the cheerleaders or the jocks, although they could come down a peg or two. I write this to recognize and encourage the rest of the class, those for whom high school was way too long with way too much busy work and not enough challenge.

Don’t get me wrong: You’ve finished and that’s quite an accomplishment. But for most of you there was never a question about whether you would graduate, just whether that day would ever actually arrive. You’ve learned to jump through all of the hoops that have been set before you. And, if you were lucky, you found a little corner of the campus like the drama department or the school paper that you could call your own.

But now you’re ready to move on, and hopefully your schools have done their jobs and you’re well prepared to take the next step in your lives. But high school is not a pattern for the rest of your life. At least it doesn’t have to be. On a college campus you’ll find that you’re not alone in your view of the world. There will be other people there who thought high school was superficial and homogenized, too.

In college there will still be cheerleaders and football players, still be homecoming and silly rituals. But in college you’ll find it’s a lot easier to ignore the Greeks than it was in high school to ignore the popular crowd. Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.

So, when you’re sitting through the graduation ceremony and the speaker says, “It seems like only yesterday we were scared freshmen looking for our lockers” and you find yourself mumbling how it seems like forever ago, remember that the end of high school not just an opportunity to start over, but a chance to finally be appreciated for what you bring to the table.

If you are one of those people who will look back on high school with fond memories, good for you. But if you’ve reached the end and you can’t figure out what all the fuss was about, relax, you’re not alone. It’s the beginning, not the end.

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