A word to the graduates
It’s just two weeks now until high school seniors across the county will turn those tassels, ceremoniously and symbolically turning to a whole new phase of life. College students, too, are now closing the education chapter of their lives and looking to join the workforce and see what life has to offer them.
On Facebook, the “On This Day” feature has been reminding me for the past couple of weeks of my own college graduation from Auburn University. There are all the status updates where I fretted over final exams, and the pictures when I picked up my cap and gown and took it on a test run for Honors College pictures. There are photos in front of Samford Hall and Cater Hall on campus. All the memories have come flooding back, and it’s hard to believe it’s been five years since I earned that piece of paper that proved I had managed to learn something – even longer since high school graduation.
The past week or so I have been interviewing the high school valedictorian and salutatorian at each school in Franklin County. These are bright, eager, ambitious young women – no young men among their ranks this year – who are both excited and anxious about what life-after-high-school holds for them. You probably remember the feeling. We will share their stories as part of our special graduation section in a couple of weeks.
As I think back on my own high school graduation – a little fuzzier than college graduation but still an unforgettable moment in my memory – I’ve been mulling over what I wish I had known then. What advice would I give? What would I do differently if I could live the last nine years over? Although plenty of topics come to mind, like different financial choices I should have made, different study habits I should have developed and all kinds of other ways I could have better prepared myself, here is just one piece of advice I wish I had taken as I set foot into my future.
Don’t abandon your high school friends.
As you near adulthood, whether by entering another two to eight years of schooling or jumping straight into the workforce, you’re going to change into a different person than you were in high school. You’re going to make new friends and develop new interests – and that’s OK. That’s the way it should be. But don’t leave your old friends behind. With some friends you will naturally stay close, and some friends will naturally drift apart, but work to maintain those relationships, if only in a more casual, less intimate way than they were during your years as a Golden Tiger, or a Wildcat, or a Red Devil, or what have you. If you look back in nine years – as I am now – and find that you really haven’t kept up with any of those high school buddies, you might feel – as I do now – a twinge of regret.
There are exciting times ahead for you, High School Graduate. But there are exciting times behind you, too. Wherever life might lead you, don’t forget your growing up years right here in Franklin County – and the people you have faced life with up until now.
