Graduation Speech :: Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

Tonight is a turning point in our lives. Weve struggled through 12 longs years together to make it to this stadium -- to give away these ridiculous looking caps and gowns as our families watch us proudly. But tonight is to a greater extent than just a ceremony, it is the closing of a chapter in our lives, the end of our frequent education.Our education has been a time of maturing, goal- tantrum and self-discovery. Mostly this has been positive.Time sure flies, so my parents say, but I think its been a long 12 years -- 13 if you count kindergarten when our parents first put us on that big yellow school bus. As time passed, we discovered that school wasnt so bad. We learned reading, writing, arithmetic, and of course, our about scholarly class recess.Junior high was another story. We were very eager to discover ourselves and to mature -- perhaps too eager. Above all, we learned to think a lot about ourselves and not much about anything else.High school has been a time of self-discov ery for all of us. Suddenly, in high school we got responsibility -- more than we wanted. We balanced jobs, sports, family, friends, and of course, homework. We also found ourselves busy with school assignments -- chasing down butterflies for our biology insect collections, parallel parking the family car for drivers ed., going to the library to actually do research and pulling all-nighters to write our term papers. It is not surprising that by the middle of 12th grade we began to develop a little syndrome -- sometimes referred to as senioritous. However, we managed to trudge through the last part of this year to achieve the dream and goal that weve worked so hard for. High school has really been about setting goals and accomplishing them.As this chapter closes in our lives, it gives way for the opening of many more chapters to come all of which will bring new challenges. Accomplishing our dreams is what gives meaning to life. The poet Carl Sandburg said, Nothing happens unless firs t a dream.