The Corner

This is of course the question I asked myself the day after the festivities, jubilation and all other celebratory activities were complete. When you think about it, its sort of a cold realization that the world (however small and contrived it may be) that you have known for the past four years of your life is over, and life has thrust you into what is often referred to as ‘The Real World’; a place often described and bitched about by parents and various older specimens of the human race. Fear comes with this realization; fear of the unknown. Questions bubble up from deep places, and the future seems like a dreary place subject only to intensive schooling and the drab life at work.

The graduation ceremony itself is looked back upon like a pointless ornamental process, filled with unnecessary procedures and an excess of camera flashes. The dank smell of beneath the stadium followed by distant bagpipes, then suddenly a lurch in the line and students file into the stadium, meeting cheers, and pats on the back, and the watchful glare of teachers making sure their precious ceremony is upheld in the highest manner without any mistakes or blatant displays of originality to stand out from the 388 other graduates all garbed in blue tent-like robes. The teachers guiding sections of students are robed in cloaks similar to those found in Harry Potter, and observation that is not lost on the soon-to-be graduates. Whispers and sorting hat references are made for the rest of the night, but none are loud or obvious enough to catch the teacher’s attention.

Speeches are made about the unavoidable successes that the class of 2009 would have; something that had been said for each class since the ceremonies birth. References to events, humorous stories, and motivational subjects were all addressed and flew over the heads of the hundreds of students, because quite frankly the only thing on their minds was to get their diplomas and scramble as fast as they could to the party, get-together, or any post-grad plan they had made. Motivation wasn’t what they needed now; it was old, dry, and overused. They had heard it a million times before for the past four years, things like “you will accomplish great things’ no longer impressed them or meant much, it was what they had been hearing most of their lives. Besides, the speaker’s voices seemed to drift around the graduates; they could only hear one voice, the voice of liberation, the voice of freedom, the voice of the unknown, the frightening, and the exciting.

Their future was now at their heels, whether it is at college far away, or right in their hometown. Working a job here, or over in Iraq or Afghanistan amongst bullets and bloodshed. It didn’t matter what they were going to be doing, all that mattered was that they would be moving on to bigger things, because it’s a big world out there, and although it is armed with a reputation for ill-manners and wrong-doing, a swindler of the highest regard, each must face it and carve out a piece of it for themselves so that in the end they can stand up and say “This is my accomplishment, this is what I have done. “ Show the world that you aren’t afraid, accept all of its challenges with a defiant smirk, and always remember where you came from, and what you were taught, because in the course of the journey, many things will be learned, but do not forget your own life lessons and experiences, for in the end they will see you through.