oh yeah this exists.

(rejected commencement speeches are the bomb diggity)


On this, the day of our graduation, there's a lot of self-congratulatory talk. You know: "We did it!! Go us!" And we should be proud to consider certain aspects of the past four years. But I know that I, at least, have some less proud moments. Some apologies to Pali. These are (some of) my confessions:

• I have carried a Sharpie onto campus multiple times.
• My phone has gone off more than once in the same class period.
• I fell asleep in the library beanbags more than once, and I'm going to be honest here, I might have drooled a little bit.
• I don't think I participated in the wave in a single pep rally.
• I have pretended not to know what Jorge meant when I was wearing a hat and he gestured at my head.
• I have perhaps abused the free milk policy, but to be fair I only realized it existed this year.
• For four years, I have contributed to the traffic blockage on the second floor balcony above the quad.
• I have never in my memory covered a math textbook.
• I may have huffed some rubber cement in 9th grade, but I maintain that that was an accidental but inevitable side effect of taking Ms Curren's class.
• I have used the roof to make important phone calls that in retrospect were not as important as I thought they were.

I guess I'm telling you all this because I can. I can say all these little things right now because right now we're sort of invincible. Today we get to forget about confessions and mistakes, and pretend to remember only the good things. Today we could be anything, could do anything, (maybe even have a conversation about something besides each other.) For the moment, we can say goodbyes with nostalgia looking back, and hope looking forward. As we go, we carry with us the support of the parents, teachers, friends, and staff who put up with us. Thanks for making us laugh, making us think, and inspiring us to suck less. Thanks for letting us be dumb teenagers but also for expecting more of us. Thanks for letting us make our own decisions and our own mistakes.
And finally, because some self-congratulatory talk is in order: Congratulations, Class of 2011, because when we throw up our hats, we'll be as free as our hair.