The Valedictorian Speech I Will Never Give

There are three things that always happens in any graduation.

• There will always be a family in the audience that is way too happy to hear their child's name read out loud.
• Anyone going into the armed services will get the loudest set of applause second only to the last person called.
• No matter how hard you try to prevent it, there will always be an air-horn can somewhere in the crowd.

As much as I should have expected this from my sister's graduation, seeing as how I went through the same thing three years prior, I was still amazed and surprised that these things happened.

I've been to two graduations thus far, my own and my sisters. Both had these things happen at least once or twice, if not more than I care for. Call me old fashion, but I believe that this ceremony is suppose to be that of their motion picture counter-parts. Graduations should be solemn, humble, proper, and above all else done in a tradition that has withstood the test of time.

That is not the case anymore. Much like how golf has been turned into a crowd cheering roar fest, partially due to the great and amazing skill of Tiger Woods, graduations have turned into a screaming contest among the popular, the well known, and the obnoxious.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. If what I have seen tonight proves anything, it proves the validity of that statement. The party kids all had wild friends screaming thinks like "I love you, Ashley!" or "It's Miller time!" (Their last name was Miller.) The studious and the introvert had respectable reactions, the kind similar to that of any kind of award ceremony. These are the only two kind of reactions I have observed during both my own graduation and my sister's graduation.

I am now convinced that graduation is a joke. It is no longer a special ceremony of passing as I once saw it. It is no longer a place in time made immortal by memories, stories, and photographs because of how special it is. Graduation is now just another thing that we do, something we journal into our minds only to alter it later. Romanticising it to make it sound just how we wanted it to. After witnessing two graduations, I see no feeling of honor in completing one. I see no sense of pride in my own graduation. I see no point to having one. Just hand the piece of paper that said I pass and move the line along. If graduations in the future continue to be like these, I think we are better off not having them.

Then again, who am I to deny those out there the right to experience such an event.