Graduation Speech: No Day But Today -- Graduation Speech, Commencement

Mrs. Meke told me never to start a paper with a dictionary definition, but it only seemed fitting to site Merriam Webster today. Graduation is the act of acceptance of an academic degree or diploma. Never have Merriam and Webster been more off their mark. Graduation is much more than a simple ceremony, it is the culmination of 12 years of work, friendships, and the little moments that still make us smile. High school was more than its name leads you to believe. It wasn’t just school, it taught us a whole lot more than how to write a good essay, who laid the foundation for communism, and why we all should despise geometry proofs. High School taught us about love, life, work ethic, and how to be a person of substance, all of which might be more important than knowing what started World War I. Before we can move on, we must reflect. These have been four long years. We will cherish the good moments we have had here, games, dances, spirit days, lunches, musicals, field trips, and other countless extra curricular activities. When we look back with our rosy retrospective, these are the moments we will remember, besides in 20 years who really is going to remember how much stress their freshman bio exam caused them. We all came in this school together. We were a mixture of nervous, excited, and scared because this was an entire new world for us. Sure we may have been scared by the size of the building or we might have gotten lost on our first day, by the end of our four years, we had it all figured out. Its just our luck, the year we figure out the quickest way to each class, which hall has the coldest drinking fountain, and what is actually edible in the cafeteria, it is the year we have to leave and start this all over ag... ...lieve it or not, they really do care. They might show it by simply asking how your day was, coming in early or staying late to help you, holding a thousand reviews before the A.P. test, or letting you turn in your paper a few days late because you have had a lot on your plate and needed a little slack. There are many of you teachers here to whom we owe unending thanks and gratitude. It would simply take to long to list all of you individually and why we are thankful, but I wanted to let you know; you make me and so many others proud to be your students. Not only have you taught us millions of facts, events, and formulas, you have taught us about ourselves. There is an old Chinese Proverb that says, â€Å"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.† Well, you can let go of my hand today; I am ready to enter that door. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.