Why graduate?
.
May 22, 2009 • written by Taylor Trauger
Filed under Senior Edition
Seated and facing an hp computer screen under blinding florescent lights, I sigh and begin writing this column a week or seven after it was due. Upon procrastinated reflection, I realize how much being a senior has truly affected me. It gave me great insight on the years I’ve spent at high school and how it will change the rest of my life, but not in the way everybody expects.
Graduation is a day which kids count down to as they live up their best years in high school; it is a day that counselors and principals mark as the most essential day of a teenager’s life and that’s why they stress the importance of passing by any means. However, I respectfully disagree. If graduation day is so important then we shouldn’t be forced to spend it wearing the ugliest outfit we’ve seen since the 90s.
High school can’t be the best years of our lives, because a) they teach you the quadratic formula and b) there are many more years left beyond high school. If I’m going to have my greatest moment of happiness at age seventeen, then what am I going to do for the next eighty years?
Many of our classmates are not even going to make it to graduation, and I think they had it right. Either they failed a required class like Government or homeroom and they’ll come around again next year, or they saw right through the administrators’ desperation for a “graduation plan,” also known as “more funding for our school,” and left.
If kids are failing and coming back next fall, then they’re only living up the best years of their lives, right? Being a senior certainly has its privileges: teachers are laid-back, underclassmen are inferior and you are so used to the lunch schedule that you know exactly which line to go through each day so you don’t change your mind and miss out on chicken chili crispitos. If you have all of these benefits as a senior, I can’t imagine what it would be like as a super senior.
I think the kids dropping out and jumping into the real world are intelligent. They’re getting out in the world with their minimal education and joining highly-educated adults as equals. It seems reasonable to me.
While teachers and administrators push graduation on students, parents push growing up. Kids who leave home and school and start a life on their own are only learning responsibilities they’ll need for the rest of their lives.
Personally, I can’t wait to start living the rest of my life, and I know it’s going to be bigger and better than high school. We all have a lot left to do in our lives and you should keep that in mind when the lunchroom ran out of veggie subs again or you’re late for school because you couldn’t find a parking spot and the arena doors are locked.
Life is bigger than your high school years, and a couple hours in a green robe is not going to teach you that.
So, I’m bored sitting in my dorm right now. I decided to look at the senior columns, and I have decided Taylor’s is my favorite! I love it so much! “Either they failed a required class like Government or homeroom”…..hahahaha!
I also just like the fact that I’m commenting on here. Probably no one will ever read this. I think I’m also going to go approve my own comment because I still know the username and password. Ha.