Graduation Speech: Leaving the Coolest Place on Earth

When I was in middle school, I thought high school was the coolest place on earth. The kids who went to high school took real classes, like English instead of block. They studied history, not social studies. And their science classes had recognizable names like biology or chemistry, not Fast I and Fast II. They could drive; they could see R-rated movies. They got seven minute passing periods and pop machines.

The last four years have not been one cool experience after another, like I imagined in middle school. Walking through the maze of halls on the first day of freshman year was a nightmare. Some of us barely survived the sophomore year slump: we have how many months until graduation? Many of us lived on 30 minutes of sleep a night our entire junior year as we tried to balance school work with our college search, a social life and a job, so we could pay for the car we thought was so cool in middle school. Senioritis struck many of us around September of our junior year, although the epidemic has certainly worsened in the past few weeks. Our senior year has been a constant battle...