My Dear Seniors (and
anyone else who feels like reading),
Oh, May, the season of
graduation. The stack of graduation invitations I have currently residing on my
bookshelf is enormous. The weekends of this month are consumed with
graduations, the parties celebrating said graduations, and emotional social
media posts by grads and people who care about them sighing over the fact that
they’re growing up. Such fun.
One of my closest
friends graduated the year before me, and two of them graduated with me last
year, but the majority graduate this year so I also will most likely be one of
those people with the over emotional social media posts. As I got to thinking
about this time last year when I walked the stage, I realized that I have grown
(well, at least from my perspective!) in many areas and gained wisdom that
would have been useful to me a year ago. So, as a pretty recent graduate
myself, these are some things that I think you, as a Senior (or simply you as a
person) should hear.
1.
You’re the bottom of the food chain.
That sounds pretty
demeaning, so I should probably explain before the rotten fruit starts flying.
Most people would read that and either be offended or assume that I am talking
about the adjustment from Kings and Queens of High School to struggling through
the freshman year of college. Nope.
I was an arrogant Senior. I thought I was super
mature, super grown up, had my life together and knew what was what. I know
that as Seniors, we can all get super giant egos and heads from being able to “rule”
over underclassmen, be in charge of things, or simply all the honoring and crap
that comes at the end of your high school career. It is extremely freeing to
realize how truly young you are, and how far you need to grow and mature to
become wise. Hey, and if anyone in society is top of the food chain, it’s probably
the grandparents out there: they’ve had plenty of time to work on this. You
rock grandparents!
2. It is okay to admit that you don’t know what you’re
doing with your life.
Not everyone has a
twelve step plan for their life right when they’re graduating, and you know
what, that’s perfectly fine. Gives the Holy Spirit more room to work anyway!
Don’t feel like you have to fake some plan for when the relatives start asking,
or go spend a ton of money on a school you don’t really like doing a major you
hate just to make more money in the future. Have a direction (meaning don’t
just sit there and do nothing), but make sure you come to terms with the fact
that it is perfectly fine to not have everything in place right now. As long as
you keep moving forward, you’ll learn what your strengths, talents and gifts
are, and learn how to use them.
3. There’s nothing wrong with community college.
I’m probably a little
too biased to make this point since I’ll be obtaining an associate’s degree
from a local community college this fall, but I’m going to make it anyway. Do
NOT feel pressured to go to a super expensive four year school if you don’t
know exactly what you want to do, can’t afford it or are just going because “it’s
what everybody else does”. Community colleges have made leaps and bounds in the
past few years, especially in the realm of technical training, and are places
where you can still obtain a quality education, but you can do it at a fraction
of the price. It’s worth not having the glamour of “going off to school” or
having every single perk of a four year school to walk into the adult world
with so much less debt. That and another benefit to community college is that
your life is not linked to your school; you go to class and do your homework,
but your life pretty much happens completely outside of school.
I could delve into the
spiritual realm of graduating and give a detailed summary of how to hold to
your own faith when your parents aren’t the ones pushing it anymore, or go into
so many other areas and tips and tricks, but I think I will leave this concise
and practical. Congratulations Seniors! Just remember that when you get out
into “adulthood” and it’s terrifying…no one else really knows what they’re
doing either, so you’re in good company. J
