For the lols

I was looking through some old documents and I found the graduation speech I submitted four years ago for the speechwriting contest at high school. To be honest, once you get past the obvious pandering to school spirit and the whole high school student trying to sound sophisticated thing, I feel like the overall theme is not half bad.

On a random tangent, I remember I wanted to print the speeches that made the final round of the competition in our special, end of the year edition of our paper. Since it was basically a collection of thoughts and quotes from our senior class (for our senior class), it felt like it would be appropriate. It got shot down. Apparently the committee that was choosing the winner didn't want to whichever speech they picked to get overshadowed or something like that. Don't mind that I suspect very few people actually read our paper or that I would have noted and given special placement to the speech that won, or the fact that ultimately only one speech would have been presented. I'm still a little disappointed that they didn't let me go ahead with that, especially since, as editor in chief at the time, I felt like I should have been the one to make that call. It wasn't like my speech made it to the final round so it's not like I was trying to do any self-promoting or anything. Anyway, whatever. Here's what I rambled about 4 years ago:

When I was a kid, my life was pretty much set for me. I was going to breeze through high school and head off to my dream college. First it was Stanford, and then when I found out how hard it is to get in to, I set my sights a little lower and aimed for Columbia. I came to Woodbridge as a freshman with this plan, but these last four years have been nothing like the quick stop I thought they would be. On a day like today, a proud day for me and every graduating Warrior, it would be easy just to revel in the moment and forget about the future.  But instead of a celebration of the present, this day should be a celebration of things to come and a springboard from which we will set out to achieve these things.

            Of course though we’re leaping off this springboard, that doesn’t mean we know where it’s going to take us. You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men, so why am I even bothering to talk about what’s going to happen in the future? Certainly my naïve, idealistic plan didn’t pan out as my 8^th grade self would have expected, as I’m not going to Columbia or Stanford or any other top ranked private university for that matter. But just because we don’t know what’s coming doesn’t mean we shouldn’t reach for our goals, because in doing so, who knows what things we may grab hold of instead.

            Maybe it sounds stupid or cliché, but when we aim high, though we might not always get what we expect, there’s no doubt that our efforts will be rewarded. Coming out of middle school I was a budding volleyball player with an ambition in talk radio who enjoyed some writing on the side. The talk radio thing sputtered as I gave up even listening to it in favor of pretty much anything else. My volleyball “career” (if you could call it that) was stunted in short order. Instead I played 4 years of high school tennis, 3 of which were on the varsity level. But I did get to write for the school paper and even reached an editor position in my senior year. I guess one out of three ain’t bad.

            In these past four years I’ve had experiences that, looking back, I can’t imagine missing out on, yet these are also things I wouldn’t have expected either. Much of what I accomplished in high school wasn’t the result of some great scheme and meticulous planning, but rather hard work and a little luck. If nothing else, I’ve learned that good things happen to people who work at it because you never know who might be watching you, prepared to commend and reward your effort.

            As we, the class of 2008, head off to college, work, the military, or any other endeavor, I encourage every person here to strive after your goals, but also prepare to deal with change. If all of us gave up simply because our initial plan didn’t work, many of us would simply be bums, living off the generosity of others. How many successful businessmen and women are here today? And how many of you wanted to be a veterinarian or an astronaut or a famous singer or rock star when you were young? No matter how lofty our goals are, we can never give up on ourselves simply because things don’t go our way. I realized there was no way I was getting into Stanford, yet here I stand before all of you today, headed to a college where I feel I can thrive. Did I quit because I couldn’t go to a school I once thought was a perfect fit for me? No, and if you believe in fate, maybe, just maybe things worked out so that I would be up here sending you this message today. And if you’re the kind of person who’s more about creating your own luck, here I am, not really anything special, but giving the graduation speech for my high school. Who would have thought?