In the Spirit of Graduating...

For those of you who may be wondering why I'm suddenly the mad blog-poster...it's raining and Jarred is gone. The house is clean, the lawn mowed and I've already ridden my bike. National Boards are far behind me and apparently I have a lot to say.

This year I've had to sit through more graduations than I'd wish to sit through. How many? Two. I know, you may be thinking that I'm a big whiner who does not value celebrations (I probably don't as I've missed two important weddings- sorry Gina and Meagan- and frequently skip out on family birthdays). But let me tell you, two graduations is two too many. I'm all for the pre and post parties but the ceremonies are less than impressive.

My first graduation experience this year was in Ephrata, Washington. Jarred's niece, Lauren, was graduating. Jarred has a kick-ass family and it was no amazing feat that Lauren was graduating, she practically has her AA degree. But it was one of those important family things that we were not suppose to miss out on (kind of like dead grandfather's funerals), so we high-tailed it out of school and pulled into Ephrata on Friday night just before the ceremony started. Luckily it was sunny and luckily I had Jarred, Claire and Jenese to sit with...the running commentary proved to keep things interesting. There were two problems with this graduation.
1. It appeared that no one had rehearsed their short speeches. The first girl to get up read her speech like it was Latin and like someone had paid her to speak in a monotone voice. She reminded me of the low-level readers in my class. Being a teacher, I know that an entire day is spent on practicing for graduation. Did this girl not make it?
2. The chosen teacher speaker was equally as painful, but in a different way. We all felt like we were being lectured....about reading books, and not paying attention in class and how tough we were on her....I almost felt guilty as she spoke but I also felt like some sort of dementia had already set in and it was a good thing she was retiring this year.
Last Friday I attended the Camas High School graduation. Us teachers are required to attend as it's written into our contract. We're also required to wear graduation robes. Graduation does not begin until 7 pm and it seems to be tradition that few teachers show up totally sober. I'd offered to have a pre-grad get together at my house. I wasn't sure about the nature of the party as I'm still fairly new to Camas so I just offered to make food and the guests would bring beverages. I wanted to play it safe in case the rumors I'd heard about alcohol consumption were not true. Nearly every guest showed up with a 6 pack of beer or a bottle of wine. I'm glad I only live two blocks from our stadium as most of the wine and beer disappeared in the two hours before the ceremony.
There were also a number of problems with this ceremony although I admit, it was impressive to have the entire staff, dressed in Harry Potter-like wizard robes, sitting with the students.
1. Three and a half hours. That's how long the ceremony lasted. Granted there were 365 kids in the graduating class so the name calling and shaking of hands and handing out of diplomas took a chunk of time, but did we really need to listen to four speeches (performed better than the Ephrata speeches), two musical presentations and see a slide show and a senior class performance?
2. The sound system. Camas just got a new stadium....$4.5 million. I'd assumed they'd spent a little money on the sound system. Apparently not. It was painful.
3. Three and a half hours.

All this graduation business got me thinking about my own graduation. That's my graduating class pictured above. Yes, that's everybody. Our ceremony did not last three and a half hours. I don't remember much about it except it was in a cool church and I spoke. Which leads me to believe that when you're a senior in high school, you think this is the most significant moment in your life, it's not....so why the big hullaboo? In this day and age, if you don't graduate from high school, you've got some serious problems. It's kind of like potty training, in fact, I'd rather have potty training celebrations as it is a really important and necessary step forward in life. Just like potty training, all of society expects you to graduate from high school...maybe you should just get a toy or a piece of chocolate when you graduate? I can't figure it out, but then again, I'm not big on celebrations as I've not gotten married, I skip out on parties, funerals and any other sort of organized celebration.