By Dylan Johnson
Hello class of 2014! I hope you’re all having as good a day as I am, and aren’t totally bored to death yet! I find myself in an awkward situation here, because, in the words of Bilbo Baggins “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve”. Think about it for a moment. It’s supposed to be a compliment.
Earlier this year, I had the absolute pleasure of completely popping my jaw out of its socket. I was yawning a little too hard as I drove over a big bump in the road, and “POP” – out came the right side of my Jaw. It hurt like all nine circles of hell, and I nearly had to be taken to the hospital. I managed to pop it back in eventually, but it certainly wasn’t fun. When I told my good friend and mentor, Ehud about this, he looked at me with a gigantic smile and said “Wow! Congratulations! That’s amazing!” of course, I was shocked and confused. How was this amazing in any way…? “It’s amazing because it was a new experience! You have now had the experience of popping your jaw out of its socket, and surviving unscathed! It may not have been a pleasant experience, but it was your experience, and that makes it awesome!”
Well, I’m not enough of a chronic optimist to really believe that what Ehud told me rings true in all cases, but I personally think that all of us here could seriously benefit from considering the idea behind his words. Ehud truly believes that experiences are incredibly important things, and that stopping to appreciate them is something wonderful. I agree with him. At Newton South, we tend to value success over almost anything else. Many of us push ourselves and push ourselves in an attempt to get into the perfect college so we can get the perfect job and live the perfect life. And this is not necessarily a bad thing.
However, by constantly preparing ourselves for the future we tend to miss what’s going on around us. We speed our way through high school constantly looking ahead. We participate in activities solely to look good, we do everything with the goal of high achievement, just so we can stand out to some college admissions officer somewhere. Rarely do we stop to consider the fact that what we’re doing is actually fun. High school is an experience, and it’s one that all too many of us choose to avoid truly experiencing.
So here we are at the end of it all. We are completely and totally prepared for our future (or so we would like to think), but many of us have lived these past four years not for ourselves, but for our parents or our guidance counselors or for the system itself which calls for every single one of us to be literally the best at everything.
So I would like to ask you all to stop for a moment. Think back on everything you have done to reach this point, and genuinely appreciate it. You’ve spent four years of your life walking these halls. You’ve invested a comparatively enormous percentage of your waking hours into your education here and the activities you’ve chosen to do here, but yet after today what you’ve accomplished will mean next to nothing. No one will care how many A’s you got or how little sleep you got or how many extracurriculars you did. No one except you. So take a moment to appreciate yourself for all that you’ve done, willingly or not. It was one helluva experience, and it was all yours. It was decidedly you. You own that experience now, and I think that’s a wonderful thing. I think Ehud would agree with me.
As this experience ends, a new one begins. Some of us are going off to college, others are entering the workforce, and others still are traversing the globe on gap years. Whatever you’re doing though, I urge you to truly experience it. Do something for yourself, because you want to do it, and really work to appreciate just how awesome what you’re doing is. Go study abroad, join a sports team, learn how to salsa dance, wrestle a bear (or a luchadore, if that’s your thing), go base jumping, learn a new language and use it to make a new friend, whatever! It’s a big world out there, so put yourself outside of your comfort zone! Throw yourself into it wholeheartedly, and don’t be afraid. You’ve spent the whole of high school preparing for what comes next, after all. You have no excuse to stay in the same rut you’ve gotten yourself into these past four years. Find what you truly love, and do it! There’s no reason not to. Take the experiences you’ve had here, and use them to go out and explore the world, because for all of us, an average life isn’t good enough anymore. We’re better and braver and stronger than average.
As I wind up, there are several people that I think we need to thank. Thank you to all of the teachers we’ve had over the years – dealing with high schoolers is a pain, we know. But you put up with us and taught us what we needed to (or wanted to) know.
Thank you to all the faculty out there who help to supervise clubs and teams! You may or may not realize it, but you do so much towards making our experience at South truly amazing. You provide us with a place where we can do what we love; and you support us, nurture us, and kick our butts when we need it.
Thank you to the fantastic guidance counsellors of south. I personally don’t know where I’d be without Mrs. Borg’s tireless assistance keeping me on track during the college application process.
And a personal thank you from me to all of my peers. A school can’t function without its students, and while I can’t say we’re particularly helpful at keeping the school running, all of you have participated in making this school a place that I wanted to be. Your collective solidarity and kindness make south strong even in the darkest of times, and it has been my pleasure to be here with you all.
So thats that. You have officially finished one gigantic amazing ridiculous hilarious terrible incredible four year experience. And to think you’ve got a whole life of experiences yet to come. Congratulations! That’s amazing!
Thank you
