forsyth | On Milestones

My sister graduated from High School today. She did well, and seems happy and excited and all, but I'll let you in on a secret. It was boring.

Obviously, any ceremony that takes two+ hours and is mostly about people you don't know and therefore don't care directly about, is generally going to be boring.

But the thing is, it was boring when I did it, too. It didn't seem important at the time, and still doesn't,mostly. I'd forgotten most of how it'd happened. Or just not remembered, until today reminded me. Not repressed memories or anything, just unimportant ones. It was a sorta "well, duh," thing about graduating. It's not like I was going to NOT graduate.

Anyway, the speeches at this were mostly boring, the class president's was basically a checklist of "thank parents, thank teachers, thank extended family, tear up, cliches." Which was obviously important to her, and is fine, but, y'know... Just didn't really mean much to me. And so, boring. That's one of the problems of having random people make the speeches, they're not practiced in writing or speeching, so they don't do so hot, usually. But people suffer through it for the ritual. So thus, short is good.

Though I do have to admit, all the cliches about "your whole life ahead of you, possibilities, etc etc etc" did make me kinda depressed, because I've done jack shit with my life so far. I don't know if the high school graduation was really not important, or if I just tend to minimize things. I'm inclined to think mostly the first, though.

Hell, I don't even know where my diploma is. it's in my room somewhere, or in the basement, I forget. No biggie.

Tags: Me, Mindscribbles