My son graduated from senior high school earlier this week, and being at the graduation rites gave me a surreal feeling of pride and accomplishment while at the same time making me feel quite old.
During the ceremony, where the toughest part was finding parking because the school wouldn’t allow non-stickered cars to park inside the campus, even for just one day, listening to the speakers made me think about what I would want to say to my son and his batchmates, if I had a chance.
And since I haven’t chosen a topic for this column yet, I might as well dedicate this column to the graduating senior high school class of 2023.
Of course, I would start off with congratulations. After all, graduating from high school is one of the biggest milestones of their young lives and they do deserve all the credit for making it to the end. While graduating may be an expectation for many families, we often forget just how difficult and stressful the process can be for those who have to go through it. They made it and we should give credit where credit is due.
They are grown people now and should celebrate this achievement with a few parties here and there, but after that they have to realize that life goes on and the truth is, like any video game, leveling up only means the degree of difficulty usually increases along with it.
Once the euphoria and celebrations of graduation week wears off, reality will be waiting for them in the form of university education, and once that other graduation is done, there is still employment or entrepreneurship, parenthood, taxes, preparing for retirement, watching your own kids graduate, etc…
While graduation rites, with all the pomp and pageantry, the togas and stoles, medals and diplomas, will make you feel like you are on top of the world, it is but one step, albeit momentous, in a journey of a thousand steps. Another truth that we all have to deal with is that you are only as good as your last performance, which is both a bad thing and a good thing.
For the achievers, remember that there are still many tests and challenges, graded and ungraded, that remain. I hope and pray that HS is not your peak, because that would be sad. Remember that being an excellent performer in high school doesn’t make you set for life because we will all have to perform over and over again, often with varying results. Our school might give medals and awards during the graduation ceremonies, but once you move on to the next stage, nobody but you and your parents will remember those awards.
For the so-called “non-achievers,” the unknown nature of the result of future performances should give hope and encouragement to do better. You are as good as your last result also means that your next results can and should get better over time, so whether you improve, stagnate, or backslide is entirely up to you. While high school grades may seem important right now, especially in the afterglow of the graduation rites and the importance university admission processes give it, its value will diminish over time, and what will ultimately matter more is what you do with the opportunities that come your way and how well you rise to the challenges that are still to come.
Graduation is not the end. It is merely a fancy checkpoint, and those who dwell too long ultimately get left behind, regardless of whether they got there first or last.
Another thing I’d like tell HS graduates, if only they would listen, is that it turns out our elders were mostly right, which was something I only realized in hindsight, after least 10-years-worth of life lessons after graduating. You might think you are right (and you probably are in some way), and that the opinions and advice of adults are stupid, judgmental, and sometimes even cringey, but they have their own truths too, and we could’ve saved ourselves a lot of unnecessary stress had we only listened a little bit more. Remember the red flags your parents told you to watch out for, because they most probably learned to identify it the hard way, and they just don’t want you to go through what they did. If an elder that you love and respect tells you something, it is because they want to pass on their knowledge and the life lessons that they learned, so don’t take that advice for granted. At the very least, just listen attentively.
I know you feel like you are on the top of the world right now, and that you can conquer any mountain, but take it from us. The journey has only just begun, and there are still a lot of lessons to be learned.
Congratulations once more, graduates of 2023. Those of us who have come before you, wish you all the best.*
