Retirement
2006-03-27, 6:20 p.m.

I still have plenty more days to walk the halls of my high school, but for some reason my English 12 teacher had her classes write out graduation speeches. This one is titled:

High school is a very important time of our lives. Pause for laughter. What many may refer to as the �high school career� has come to an end. We�ve reached retirement. Sure, we may not get paid in money, but we�ve definitely gotten a lot out of it. You may not want to admit it, but I�m not talking about what you don�t want to admit. I�m not talking about the career part of high school. But it has been like a career. When you go to your job, the average person knows that they will be seeing people they don�t want to see. That�s a part of life. You have to work with people you may not want to work with. The average person who has a job is told to get to work on the latest assignment. In high school, we don�t have bosses, we have teachers. Or is it the other way around?

So the average person and especially the average high school student dread getting up every morning for school. And it also seems like we�re always waiting for something. We�re waiting for the hour to be over. We�re waiting for the end of the day to come. We can�t stand waiting for the weekend to get here. We�re waiting for Christmas vacation or spring vacation. We�re waiting. Well, let me give you a piece of advice for your future. Don�t wish for time to pass. Don�t wish your life away.

I may not be in any position to give this kind of advice, though. I mean, I always had some weekend plans that I couldn�t help but be excited for. But I like it that way. When you have the weekend to look forward to, your week certainly seems to be a little longer, doesn�t it? And that gives you more time to stop and smell the roses.

But back to my point, high school is a very important time in our lives. And we�ve reached retirement. And, again, we haven�t been paid in money, but we sure have gotten a lot out of it. And, again, I�m not talking about the academics. High school, lets face it, wasn�t ever really about the academics. And I don�t mean to say that because I wasn�t the best student. It wasn�t about the classes we took. But it was about the learning. We paid attention to what we needed to. We learned what we wanted to. We learned what was important.

I believe that Williamston was a perfect place to grow up in. Sure, it may be a small place to live, but I think that is to our advantage. In a small town, you grow up to know everybody. Sure, some rumors are spread quicker than a fox�s reaction time, but perhaps by telling anybody in the first place, we subconsciously just want to know that people care. When we go out to begin our futures, go to where our dreams tell us to, and move out of Williamston, the social aspect is going to get a whole lot bigger. In Williamston, we have the advantage of already knowing people and being able to find our friends in whatever social group we belong. As opposed to the academics, it is actually the social aspect of high school that makes it important. And living in a small town gives us that advantage to know and meet people that we are meant to be friends with. In what teachers refer to as �the real world,� it�s going to be a lot harder. But we will move on. We will begin our futures that we�ve had our whole lives to think about. We will go where our dreams tell us. And we will make new friends and start a new life.

Maybe that�s a scary thought for people. Getting out and actually really doing something with our lives. We are moving on and preparing to actually change the world. We will be our own bosses. We will make time to stop and smell the roses in our busy lives. We won�t have to wish our lives away by always waiting for something. The future is here, and we�re living it. We will live for others, and have fun. We will do what we love, and, one day, who we love.

~~

Even though this was a random assignment, it was a huge coincidence that I watched "The Graduate" for my first time this weekend. I'd like to thank my good friend Kelly Ms. B. for letting me borrow that one. It was a classic.

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