I Don't Wanna Grow Up - High School Graduation 2007

You know, it astounds me as to how fast these past 18 years have gone by. As I lined up to recieve my "diploma" onstage (it was actually empty and we had to go backstage to recieve the real ones), I spent the moment reflecting on how easily I remember being a child, and how Peter Pan was right, and I won't grow up ...

Here I am preparing to go off to college, to WPI! I'm getting ready to buy my school supplies, and color coordinate my folders, notes, and notebooks. I'm 18 now. I can buy some illicit substances ( not that I want to) and I have a credit/debit card now. All of these things that are 'grown-up' in nature, and I'm doing them!

And, to be honest, some of them are fun. Driving the car is my all-time favorite because it alludes to a sort of freedom that isn't experienced anywhere else that I know of. However, most of these adult duties are scary, and I just want to return back to my teddy bears and naptimes and forget about everything else.

But then I think how if there weren't teachers there, and lunch ladies, and annoying PTA moms, well, those childhood moments wouldn't have existed. I, a slightly weaker emotionally child, would have been squished by more assertive children and we would experience a Lord of the Flies situation, and we don't want that to happen, do we?

I suppose what I'm trying to articulate is that despite the beauty and wonderfulness of being a child, and despite the fact that I don't want to be an adult and that my duties as such terrify me, It's time for me to give it up. My next job is to make childhood for others the wonderful experience it was for me. It's like accepting the inevitability of death; once you've accepted that its going to happen, all you can really do is make the limited number of days you have left worth something more than they were before.

I don't try to give advice or make stunning new epiphanies, but I think I personally have gained something from reading this over. Something about growing up and moving on. I hope you understand it as well, and can take something away from my endless ramblings.

So, after experiencing graduation, after giving up high school and its safety net for college and its endless opportunities, this is what I think: I'm going to miss my friends and teachers so very much as I turn down a different path, but I know that it's for the best, and that I am going to follow Ghandi's wisdom. "Be the change you want to see in the world."