Graduation 2005

Hey .. This is me bieng bored. I wrote a speech for dynamics class, I thought it was nice, so here it is... It's kinda like a goodbye speech...
Love Shle
xoxo


So you are sitting in the library, getting your final instructions... “This is it,” you’re thinking, as you look around you, taking in the same scenes you’ve taken in for the past five years.
Your instructions are clear. As they call your name and read out your grad-write up, you walk across the stage, shake hands with Mr. Burns and Mr. Kee. Then you go back and sit down… But then what? Doesn’t it seem like your whole life has had an instruction manual to it? You start school, and for thirteen years, the routine is almost the same each day. Get up, get dressed, and go to school. As the years progressed, perhaps some things changed. Maybe your mom didn’t choose your outfit anymore. Maybe you started driving yourself to school, perhaps you got a job. But your life has been fairly safe. Someone has always been there to let you know what the next step was. So where are they now? We’ve shaken hands with the principals, waved at our parents, and sat back down... What’s next? And who is going to be there to tell you?
We are all on some kind of journey, for the most part, our journeys have been the same, but this is the point in our lives where the roads on which we walk diverge, and wiggle away into the distant landscapes of our lives. For some of us, the path is clear, unobstructed. You know what you are doing in the next few months. You have a plan. Nothing is going to go wrong. But some of us don’t know the meaning of the word clear, let alone plan. For people like that, to borrow a quote from Oasis, “all the roads we walk along are winding, and all the lights that lead us there are blinding.” We do not know where our future is going to take us, our path is not straight, but it has many, many curves, obstacles, and forks in it. For example, “Do I work for the year, or do I go straight to school?” and when that decision is made, “Where do I work, or what school do I go to?” and when we finally do get to school, “What do I take?” “What do I want to do with my life? “ It is question after question, and each decision we make could drastically change our lives.
So it is at this point in our lives where we begin to understand who we really are. We become no longer, our parents children, not our grandma’s little girl, but we become our own person. This is the fork in the road where your life begins. And there are no road signs. No maps. Only the stars. And as this, what some call the most wonderful years of your life, come to an end, I encourage you to reach for the stars, for they hold within them your future. No one here can tell you what your life will be like in ten years, only you. Only you know what will truly make you a success. No one can give you instructions on how to get there. To some, success may be money, it may be fame. To me, it’s happiness. I don’t know when I’ll reach that, but I imagine that we will all reach the stars, in our own time. Some in the next few months. Some in a few years. You never know, and no one but yourself can tell you when you have reached them. That doesn’t help you much, does it? But there are things in this life that we have all experienced which will help us reach those stars, which will help us choose the right path. Those things began as the tiniest smile, years ago. Those things began as you, a trembling grade eight kid, took your first glance into the halls of Seycove. It is within these halls that we have learned much of what we know, and I am not referring to the dates of the civil war, not the components of an atom. I’m talking about life. It’s here where we grew up. It’s here where we made our good friends our best ones. We’ve cried here, we’ve laughed here, we’ve learned many a lesson that shaped who we are to this very day. These are the moments we’ll remember all our lives. I couldn’t have asked for more in a high school. I couldn’t have asked for more in a grad class, for we have come together brilliantly, and we form an amazing group. I am thankful for the things I’ve learned with all of you. I look back at grade eight and so many things have changed within our class since then. We are the class of 2005, and we are in this together.
So back to today. I encourage you to look around the room right now. Many of the people you see today, you will not see, perhaps ever again. Scary isn’t it? So I encourage you to have another look around. Implant this day, this year somewhere deep in your mind. A few years from now, when you are standing at yet another fork in the road, you can look back and remember the faces of those who were with you when you faced your first truly difficult decisions. Remember the days where we sat in our dynamics classes, sharing bits of our lives with everyone here. Remember the times when we’d wince at the thought of cafeteria food. Remember Seycove. And as you walk down your separate roads, remember, above all, the friendships that began here in the hallowed halls of the best years of your life, for they will take you where you want to be.
Good Luck, class of 2005, and congratulations. We made it.