Technically, I'll only walk across the stage and receive an empty diploma case. Our real diplomas aren't available until August, and the ceremony is ultimately meaningless anyway.
But tomorrow, I will graduate from high school.
It's an interesting feeling. I've been told for years that I would have a surge of emotions; that nostalgia, regret, and happiness would flood my entire being as I prepared to enter the real world alongside my 273 closest friends. That's just utter bullshit. True, I feel a twinge of regret and I'm a little happy to be done, but high school was neither a dreadful experience to flee nor a glorious experience to savor. It was pretty ok - I did some things well, I did some things I shouldn't have, I didn't do some things I should have, and I had some good times. But all in all, this is process is tiresome and underwhelming. If I could not go to the graduation ceremony, I would - but I imagine that there are a number of friends, acquaintances and supporters who would be disappointed if I played hooky.
What's exciting and scary to me is my future, and that involves my high school very little.
I got rejected from all the schools I really wanted to attend, and I'm now getting excited for a school that was fairly low on my list. This is cause for thought.
I was guaranteed a spot at UC Davis as a result of being in the top 4% of my high school. This notification came very early in my senior year, so I knew all along that I would be going to college. Maybe this made me too complacent in my applications; maybe I didn't go out and try for the Ivy League as strongly as I should have; maybe I was happy to settle with what I'd accomplished already and subconsciously sabotaged my efforts to further.
But this kind of speculation makes me hate myself a little. I met an exchange student from Tanzania last year who talked about the difficulty of getting an education in the developing world. Education after elementary school is unavailable to all but the elite. I have been educated by my government for twelve years. I have been offered a spot at an American University - how can I equate that with failure? Why do I take my rejections from schools with acceptance rates of six or seven percent as precipitously damning, when I landed such a fantastic deal in a respected research institution? I understand that context defines value, that UC Davis was fairly low on the scale of opportunities available to me, but I must not allow the incredible inflation of that scale to define my worth as an academic candidate and as a person.
I must reconcile my expectations with my ability, my evaluative framework with my context, my sense of success with my opportunity.
When I graduate tomorrow, as I reflect on how meaningless the ceremony is to me, as that snarky internal dialogue from the beginning of this entry prances through my head, I will remind myself of the incredible gift this ceremony represents.
I will not take my position for granted, but I will maximize it endlessly.
