I guess you could call this an extremely delayed typical graduation speech… But, these are what my final thoughts of graduating were…. And what I still feel when I look back on my last days today. A reflection of a very important paragraph in the chapter of my life, if you will.
On this very day last year, it was one of the most daunting, yet most exhilarating days in my life thus far. Although, I’m sure that many… or most people were pumped to be done with high school, I almost instantaneously felt like a kid lost in a shopping centre. I was suddenly in a world without the routine that I had followed for the past 13 years of my life. I felt lost.
It was one of those days that any sane high school kid would count down the days ’till… and the thing is, I did. Except, I didn’t realise how much I didn’t want those last days to come… until I started willing the seconds to drag in to hours. That’s the moment when you realise you’ve gone bat-shit crazy. I would walk around the hallways passively thinking about how ‘this time… next week, this won’t be my locker anymore’ and ‘this is the last second-last tuesday I will ever have of high school’… and this scared me so much.
Backtrack 2 years to 2011, I remember sitting with one of my best friends on a ramp outside the gym, drinking our iced coffees, watching the Year 12s wreak havoc on the school thinking about how ‘this time next year… that’s gonna be us’. As we stared at a year 12s artistic drawing of a penis on the backboard of a basketball hoop… I was already starting to feel a little scared of the year ahead.
Then, let’s skip forward again… Except not too forward. At this very moment last year, I was over at one of my best friend’s houses drinking my heart out, ‘getting ready’ for muck up day. I was eating pizza with my close group of high-school friends by a pool… sitting on a red couch we had taken from somebody’s hard-rubbish pile just a few hours back. We were talking about nothing of substance for ages, and we were all pumped to get high school ‘done and dusted’. Then in a few hours, I would wake up early, make a labyrinth in the Year 9 locker bays wearing a moustache and a sombrero. Then after walking through the guard of honour for our final assembly, I’d get home, conk out on my bed for a few hours then get ready to go to our valedictory dinner.
The thing is, I hate change. This is the only reason I was dreading walking in to our final assembly on that day. If I could, I would go back and do the same boring shit I did in high school everyday… Except life doesn’t permit these perpetuating pitstops, which is just bloody fantastic. Seriously, though… it is. Otherwise I’d be comfortably looping the easy years of life again and again.
However, of course I must do that whole ‘reflective thing’ and look back at all the times I did enjoy in all my schooling years. I did enjoy the free breakfasts every Wednesday. Then that crappy coffee machine in the Senior School kitchen. I loved hanging out in the art rooms (yes, I was one of those kids), and the hierarchical system that went on in the school buses.
I know this is also a very cliche thing to say, but a year has gone by and I still stand by this. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to have in my cohort. I didn’t speak to all of them, but I enjoyed how reputable we were for being the laziest year level… In the history of all year levels. I also loved how one of my favourite teachers was chuckling at the fact I was bawling my eyes out whilst walking through that guard of honour. Although sometimes I may miss school like crazy, I’m grateful for every person that made those moments so memorable… Then to all those people who have shaped me to become what I am today.
… Now, a toast to the future… and my undying dread of those ‘last moments’ in life.
Kylie. x
opiate for the masses 