WAYZATA SENIORS - This is my graduation speech! I would love to speak in front of you at graduation and it would be such an honor if you chose my speech, so VOTE VOTE VOTE!
Four
years ago, I walked into what I thought would be the beginning of the rest of
my life. High school seemed like such a foreign and exciting concept at the
time. We all had our own perceptions of high school that we had heard from
siblings or neighbors. Most of you were probably excited to be going to high
school. I was terrified. I thought I was going to be part of the freshman
stereotype: shoved into lockers, jostled in the hallway, kicked out of my seat
at lunch. But I wasn’t treated that way. Coming to the high school from a
middle school outside of the district, I thought that I was going to be treated
like an outsider, awkwardly glanced at because nobody was really sure who I
was. But I wasn’t treated that way either. I thought that I was going to enter
high school, clueless about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and
leave high school with a clear path laid out for me.
Unfortunately, that’s not my case; but
it is for some of you. Some of you have known what you’ve wanted to pursue in
college since you were nine years old and you made up your mind to become a
doctor from watching shows like Grey’s Anatomy and House, although I don’t know
why you would be watching those shows at that age. Maybe you figured out you
wanted to be a chemist because you made your paper maché volcano explode using
baking soda and vinegar at your 8th grade science fair. Or maybe you
had written so many book reports that you figured you were supposed to become
an English teacher. Some of you took Journalism and realized you wanted to be a
journalist or a TV anchor from working on Newsbreak. Maybe you took woodshop or
interior design classes and decided to become an architect. You could have
joined DECA or BPA and ended up becoming really interested in business or
economics. Maybe your left brain was intrigued by calculus so you’re majoring
in math. Or maybe you fell in love with choir or became a band geek and you
want to be a musician.
It’s impossible that we’ll all know
what we want to do for the rest of our lives when we’ve only lived 18 of those
years. I’m sure you’ve all had relatives or neighbors come up to you and ask
“Where are you going next year? What do you want to do?” I don’t know about you
all, but I have a mini panic attack anytime I get asked that question. What do
you want to do? I don’t know, I’m not sure yet. But that’s okay, isn’t it?
As letters from college started to
trickle in and everyone became stressed out, it occurred to me that the anxiety
I had for acceptance-letter season was due partly to the fact that I was
comparing myself to everybody else. Many of you knew what you were going to do
and many of us don’t, but it’s not wrong if you don’t know what to do. Odds
are, it’ll change. Over 50% of college students change their major, so that
offers a little consolation. We all have our notions or predictions about what
college is going to be like, or at least what we want it to be like. Go into
college with your plan in mind, but don’t be surprised when those plans change.
It’s wonderful that we have the opportunity to choose what we want to do. I
don’t think we fully realize how powerful of a thing choice is. Embrace it and
take full advantage of it. And even if you haven’t made a decision yet, that
doesn’t mean your time in high school has been useless. Far from it. Wayzata
has prepared us to face anything we want to conquer. You can pursue whatever
you want because of the foundation of education we’ve been given. We’ve all become
pretty smart. We’ll figure it out.
These decisions we’re facing feel
pretty daunting but we need to remember that we aren’t confined to them. We
aren’t always going to be restricted to our college major and we don’t have to
be trapped in one job for eternity. Most of us are going to make and change and
reverse many decisions in the next couple years once we explore more of the
world and figure out what we actually want to do. It’s okay that our future
isn’t mapped out for us because that’s part of life. We learn as we go and we
pave our own way. We can thank everyone we’ve met for having some sort of
influence on that path. Thank your parents, your friends, teachers, coaches,
babysitters, cousins, whomever you’d like, but make sure you do thank them.
They’ve made you who you are. So, Wayzata grads of 2013, prepare yourselves for
some twists and turns and bumps along the way, but just know that no matter
where life takes us, we’re ready for it.
-Meredith Ford
