Seniors in high school don’t get this last week. They just don’t. They were pretty much done last Thursday, but they still think there is some different form of school going on. There isn’t.
Today, Monday, their last Monday in high school, they got to sit in classes, sign yearbooks, have a little potluck (you are so welcome for the burritos–man, those suckers were good), and hang out with each other in a classroom for the last time.
Tomorrow, they practice walking in graduation. Wednesday they graduate. That night is grad night at the bowling alley. They pick up diplomas on Friday and then they’re done. It goes that quickly, and they think they have all this time for this and that, but it just ends.
.
But it isn’t something you can just turn off, is it? 13 years of schooling and it’s done like that. Bells ring, and instead of me being there to sign some more yearbooks, I have to go teach a sophomore class.
Years ago, Gillian Hart and I used to do a final newsletter for kids. Hello, closure. Okay, she did the whole newsletter and I added a final note for them. I found one that I gave out in 2013. It goes a little something like this–
Students, and others, and you—
This time of year is frustrating. As always, I feel that I’ve failed, that nothing was accomplished, and that you are soon turned out to a cruel world that will crush you as quickly as I type this note. So consider this my last lesson to you.
Understand yourself, for you have been yourself since birth. The labels that others have placed upon you meant something at one point or another, but those all go away when you leave high school. Understand yourself, because others are going to try to point you in directions you don’t want to go. This is not that “follow your passion” quest—some of you haven’t found that passion yet, so it’s pretty hard to follow nothing. Keep at it, though, and something might come your way.
Understand the world around you. You can poo-poo my Camus, but he was trying to help you choose your own existence. Kesey was trying to help you, too, Chief, for most of you are waiting for your RPM to snap you out of your slumbers. You don’t have to shoot an Arab or drop acid, but you need to understand that one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.
Most importantly, understand that people are full of crap. People are not better than you, smarter than you, better looking than you, richer than you, or any other aspect upon which society places value. These people will try to hold you down, to take your spot in line, and to confuse you by contrasting their brilliance against yours. THEY’RE FULL OF CRAP. Move past them and don’t judge your successes and failures against theirs.
If I could, I would reach through this paper and pull you into a place where we could understand one another better and tilt our heads back and laugh at the ridiculousness of what we’ve just been through. I would pull you to a place that doesn’t really care what you do, or what car you drive, or who said what to whom about so-and-so. We would hang out, turn our cell phones off, eat ambrosia and drink nectar, and howl at the moon just like those in our collective unconscious.
But I only have words for you, and, for that, I’m sorry.
That was 2013. Nothing has really changed. Students said I made them a little weepy with some of the things I wrote in their yearbooks, but I was just being honest. I have met some of the nicest, most honest people through teaching my students, and it’s always a privilege to live vicariously through them after they graduate and go on to great things.
It’s the daily 180 that makes them think I can’t speak to them like I do, or write to them in a way that shows that I understand them and am impressed. I’m spoiled in that sense, as is Gillian Hart, for we know. We know the deal.
Alright, enough for today. As Iggy Pop said, when I saw him naked on stage, “Play the music.”