Graduation season is upon us, which means it is time to celebrate another year of graduates. It also means it is time for my annual graduation column.
To the members of the class of 2024, congratulations on your academic achievement. The long hours of studying, taking tests, and writing papers have paid off. You made it to graduation. It will undoubtedly be a special time in your life. Graduation marks the closing of one chapter of your life and the transition to another. Don’t just go through the motions at your graduation ceremony; be present in the moment and be mindful of all the day’s events.
Remember the joy and excitement you feel at your graduation every May for the rest of your life. Let the sights, sounds, and smells of the final days of spring become your annual reminder of your graduation. I think about my graduation (many years ago) whenever I see the magnolias start to bloom and the temperature creep into the upper 80s.
Graduation is a time to appreciate just how quickly time passes. Kindergarteners become graduates in the blink of an eye. Today’s clothing styles and pop culture will soon be outdated. Today’s cutting-edge pop music will one day be played as background music in supermarkets and elevators. Today’s hi-tech devices will soon feel archaic like cassette tapes and VCRs do today. Today’s popular athletes, actors/actresses, and musical artists will see their careers decline. Some careers may fade quicker than others, but nobody stays an A-list celebrity for very long. Life is a procession of people getting their 15 minutes of fame and slowly fading into the background.
We are all creatures of the time in which we live. Lorne Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Life, once stated that everyone’s favorite era of SNL is the years they were in high school. We all tend to believe the years of our youth were the coolest, trendiest, and most fashionable.
It is haunting to think the school you were so familiar with will become a distant memory. You can visit again one day, but your school will never have the same vibe that you once knew. New generations of students will inherit the halls that you once walked through. Even the teachers will slowly retire until you hardly know anyone at “your school.” The social hierarchy at your school won’t matter much after your graduation. Few people will care who the class president, homecoming queen, or quarterback were. What will matter is how you apply what you learned in the future.
None of life’s achievements would be possible without help from others. Graduation is a great time to thank the people who helped you along the way. Every year at graduation time I try to reach out to a former teacher, coach, or someone special who helped me in life. Recently I have been thinking about a special couple who were important in my life: Jo and Charles Blackwell. Ms. Jo was never my teacher, but she was my math tutor. Math was something that never came naturally too me; frankly, math was a struggle. She was patient, kind, and helped me out more than she will ever know. Mr. Charles is a retired Petal Junior High principal who gave me direction and encouragement in my first job: mowing grass and weed eating during the hot summer days following my 11th and 12th grade years. I appreciate them both immensely.
If I can offer one piece of advice to the class of 2024, remember to take graduation photos with your grandparents. They are enormously proud of you. Grandparents are your best link to the past. One day you will treasure photos with them more than you can possibly imagine. Best wishes and congratulations to the class of 2024.
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Keith Ball is a local attorney and a lifelong resident of the Friendly City.
