Mic Check
Now listen to this.
I will now proceede to warm up the microphone for the three graduation speakers Joesph Corey, Bradley Sawyer, and Meagan Wilson.
I am posting my speech now, so by the time graduation rolls around, it'll be out of the minds eye...and I'll have an audience for it anyways.
This is a cumulative reflection on some of what I've felt like this year.
Read if you please.
I’ve spent a lot of time this year reflecting. I’d like to share with you some of what I’ve been thinking about.
So…I love getting the mail, I think it’s exciting. I’ve thought so since I was a little tike. Back in those days I would wobble out to the mail box under the summer sun wearing my dads blue rubber flip flops…which were size 8.5’s…enormous compared to my tiny size three pair of Nike air flights. Everyday it seemed like I could never grow to be that big…and fitting into my dads flip-flops became one of the rights of passage to manhood. Around the onset of my freshmen year I reached size 8.5, only to encounter another infamous pair of shoes.
Those new shoes belonged to Peter Leto, who actually wore several different styles of footwear: Doc Martens, Sandals, Adidas Superstars…but his fly kicks aren’t why I remember and revere him. It was more of an admiration of how he filled his shoes. At Rochester High, when I was a freshmen Peter was a senior and one of the greatest mentors I’ve ever had. He guided naturally and flawlessly, probably not even realizing the heroic effect he had on the people following him. Pete was compassionate and cool, friendly with a universal personality, making those around him feel tall, even if they were kind of short…like myself. Filling his shoes would be a great accomplishment on its own, but Pete never seemed to recruit a successor to explicitly follow his example. I’m guessing he believed that an essential part of high school was making your own pair of shoes, not just filling someone elses…which reminds me of our senior class.
We came to Stoney Creek as sophomores and started at square one. We didn’t have a instruction booklet for creating a high school, no templates to cut success from, no traditions, not even an old rubber sole to start from. We came to Stoney wearing what seemed like only a pair of socks, and we made our own shoes. We kind of had to.
And now this past semester was like the last step, it was like tying up the laces and the loose ends. But I’m not gonna lie, for the past couple of months it’s seemed like all of this high school business was pointless. But then I was thinking…it’s because we haven’t graduated. It’s like, once we graduate we can actually fit together why we did what we did in high school. Until graduation day we couldn’t have realized that maybe the factoring of polynomials and creating income statements was actually a lesson in being patient, that the science labs were about thinking clearly, not just about studying mitochondria or electric current, that those long practices outside weren’t just for winning trophies, that those hours of Steinbeck were about the triumphs of the human soul, and not just a bunch of stories about California, that the chapters of history were the tales of how things came to be this way, and the art, music, and theatre were there to feel the world spinning beneath our feet…not just classes to practice making pretty things or pretty sounds. Now, once we graduate we can take our experiences and maybe realize that high school didn’t exist just to help us get into college, or to achieve a GPA, and it was something more. And even though we’ve been out of school since May 27th, only now can say were done because we’re finally learning our last lesson…the meaning of graduation.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about…the meaning of graduation.
Anyway, we seniors have some graduating to do…so…
Good Morning Stoney Creek, and in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.
That is all.
I will now proceede to warm up the microphone for the three graduation speakers Joesph Corey, Bradley Sawyer, and Meagan Wilson.
I am posting my speech now, so by the time graduation rolls around, it'll be out of the minds eye...and I'll have an audience for it anyways.
This is a cumulative reflection on some of what I've felt like this year.
Read if you please.
I’ve spent a lot of time this year reflecting. I’d like to share with you some of what I’ve been thinking about.
So…I love getting the mail, I think it’s exciting. I’ve thought so since I was a little tike. Back in those days I would wobble out to the mail box under the summer sun wearing my dads blue rubber flip flops…which were size 8.5’s…enormous compared to my tiny size three pair of Nike air flights. Everyday it seemed like I could never grow to be that big…and fitting into my dads flip-flops became one of the rights of passage to manhood. Around the onset of my freshmen year I reached size 8.5, only to encounter another infamous pair of shoes.
Those new shoes belonged to Peter Leto, who actually wore several different styles of footwear: Doc Martens, Sandals, Adidas Superstars…but his fly kicks aren’t why I remember and revere him. It was more of an admiration of how he filled his shoes. At Rochester High, when I was a freshmen Peter was a senior and one of the greatest mentors I’ve ever had. He guided naturally and flawlessly, probably not even realizing the heroic effect he had on the people following him. Pete was compassionate and cool, friendly with a universal personality, making those around him feel tall, even if they were kind of short…like myself. Filling his shoes would be a great accomplishment on its own, but Pete never seemed to recruit a successor to explicitly follow his example. I’m guessing he believed that an essential part of high school was making your own pair of shoes, not just filling someone elses…which reminds me of our senior class.
We came to Stoney Creek as sophomores and started at square one. We didn’t have a instruction booklet for creating a high school, no templates to cut success from, no traditions, not even an old rubber sole to start from. We came to Stoney wearing what seemed like only a pair of socks, and we made our own shoes. We kind of had to.
And now this past semester was like the last step, it was like tying up the laces and the loose ends. But I’m not gonna lie, for the past couple of months it’s seemed like all of this high school business was pointless. But then I was thinking…it’s because we haven’t graduated. It’s like, once we graduate we can actually fit together why we did what we did in high school. Until graduation day we couldn’t have realized that maybe the factoring of polynomials and creating income statements was actually a lesson in being patient, that the science labs were about thinking clearly, not just about studying mitochondria or electric current, that those long practices outside weren’t just for winning trophies, that those hours of Steinbeck were about the triumphs of the human soul, and not just a bunch of stories about California, that the chapters of history were the tales of how things came to be this way, and the art, music, and theatre were there to feel the world spinning beneath our feet…not just classes to practice making pretty things or pretty sounds. Now, once we graduate we can take our experiences and maybe realize that high school didn’t exist just to help us get into college, or to achieve a GPA, and it was something more. And even though we’ve been out of school since May 27th, only now can say were done because we’re finally learning our last lesson…the meaning of graduation.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about…the meaning of graduation.
Anyway, we seniors have some graduating to do…so…
Good Morning Stoney Creek, and in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.
That is all.