St. George’s School: Funny - seems we were just kids yesterday
Graduation time is here. Soon, , the boys and girls I’ve learned with and grown with since I was 11 will be men and women, high school graduates, adult members of society.
I assume that sometime between now and then, we will all undergo some dynamic change, transforming us from fun-loving kids into industrious, responsible grown-ups. Exactly when that change will come, I do not know. But for years and years, I’ve watched the Saint George’s graduation ceremonies and been struck by the quiet maturity that carries the senior class as they receive their diplomas. I can’t help but wonder what it will feel like when the blanket of maturity overwhelms me and my classmates.
Of course, I understand that we will not all grow up in one sudden bound. Graduation will bring summer vacation and college, giving us plenty of opportunities to continue to be young and foolish. For that ceremony, though, for the graduation itself, I expect that we will be like classes before us, modeling the utmost maturity and sincerely representing a change inside of us, some little trigger that jolts us out of our childhoods and propels us over the first few steps to adulthood.
Sometimes it seems impossible to imagine my classmates as adults. When I look at the faces of my peers, I still see the girls and guys who were there at our first, awkward middle school dances, who played truth or dare on long bus trips to the coast, and who repeatedly locked their lockers and then forgot the combinations. It is strange to realize that these are the very same people who have demonstrated such integrity and maturity in state basketball games, large-scale theatre productions, and selfless acts of community service. When I look closer, it is no longer impossible to see the adults in my classmates: In fact, they shine through intensely.
Graduation itself, the transition into our next stages of life, will be very different from those changes that it brings. The graduation ceremony is predictable, dependable. We will walk across the bridge in our white dresses and navy blue suit coats, arm in arm, carrying bouquets of red roses. We will sit in the sun by the platform, listen to the bagpipes play “Amazing Grace,” and cross the stage one by one as we receive our diplomas. All of this we will do with that quiet maturity that seems to grace each class on their graduation day.
Our next stages of life, however, are anything but predictable. For the first time in our young adult lives, we will be split from each other, from the school that has nourished us, and from the families that have raised us. We will scatter across the country, learning new ways of life, and figuring out what sorts of adults we will become.
As my friends and I are carried through these changes, over the coming month and across the coming years, I have but one wish for each of us. My wish is that we would all always remember this place that brought us up, the community and the school that formed our young lives, and the day of graduation that will represent the culmination of the work of a community. That is my simple wish, that my peers and I would always remember our graduation, a symbol of what we have endured and accomplished together. I know that if we each remember where we’ve come from, we will have no reason to fear where we may go. If we each remember this graduation, in some ways we will stay together, and we will not get lost.