A Wish Upon the Stadium Lights

Ephesians 2:10 "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

Finally, our time has come to graduate and we’ve all got these big city dreams. Yes, this is goodbye, but we still have this one last night together. Tonight will change our lives and I’m so glad that I have all of you at my side, experiencing the same thing.

Before we part, I’d like to take a few moments to reflect on the past few years of our lives. These are the times that we began to define ourselves. These are the memories we will remember all of our lives.

Freshman year was terrifying. We didn’t know what to expect. Did they really put freshmen in the trashcans every Friday? We had seen the movies and read the books, but what was the truth? We quickly discovered that yes, it is as hard as everyone had said, but then something happened that we didn’t expect-we actually had fun. As a class, we learned about Mrs. Hilburn’s loathing of tardiness. As for the rest of you, I don’t think I will ever forget how to spell “loathe.” We experienced classes with the upperclassmen and the trials of trying to get through the lunch line everyday and still have time to eat. We found that thing that we loved to do-for me it was being a band geek in the marching band, for others it was playing sports. Sophomore year began with us thinking that we were on top of the world, like kings without castles. We considered ourselves upperclassmen, but the rest of the school didn’t seem to care. We were so frustrated-didn’t anybody realize what an accomplishment it was to make it through freshman year? To make matters worse, we had Coach Rob pounding the Amendments into our heads everyday and making us write them what seemed like a million times when we got them wrong. We really should be thanking him for that though, because I have recently learned that we will use them in real life, unlike the Greek alphabet that we learning in math.

As a junior, we were finally upperclassmen. We were able to tell the underclassmen what classes they could text in, and what teachers would give them extensions, namely Dr. Tubbs. We were also shown a whole different way of teaching: I’m sure we all remember Mrs. Ayers’ solid, liquid, gas cheer and of course, that a mole wasn’t just furry little stuffed animals she had in her classroom that seemed to go missing everyday. Near the end of junior year the nerves of senior year started to settle in. What teachers would we have? Would we pass Mrs. Cooper’s class?

Then senior year came. We had finally made it. The year was full of changes. Groups were about to split apart as everyone seemed to be going to a different college. Most importantly, senior year was a bonding experience. We learned the new teachers together, and we discovered that senioritis was a myth-it was just the same reluctance we had been experiencing all throughout school. We united to celebrate our last year of normalcy, well as normal as high school can be, before we have to go out into the scary real world. Let’s face it, we’re all terrified about the uncertainty that our futures hold.

In high school we felt like we were on trial everyday. We felt the pressure to fit in and the pressure to do good. Friendships were tested and some were even broken, sports teams lost, and we were faced with new, unknown teachers. But we didn’t let that get us down. We persevered and we reached the moment we are at now. We have put ourselves out there to the world to see. We will remember the best things about high school, moving on from the bad. We will remember the new friendships that were made and the bonds of friendship that were strengthened over time, the victories we won as a team, the camaraderie we experienced, and that class that we aced that we thought we were going to fail horribly. We will remember the fun we had on the bus rides back from matches, games, and competitions, all of the screaming and yelling, and the purposeful annoying our coaches and directors. We will remember the all of the smiles, laughs, and tears of joy that we shared, choosing to overlook the times that we cried from unhappiness.

Failure is not what high school was about. High school was a learning experience. It was about making mistakes and learning from them. It was about forming our own opinions of right and wrong, and standing up for those opinions. It was about firsts. It gave us the chance for a new and fresh start. For many of us it presented us with our first serious relationships, and also gave us our first heart-tearing breakup. Some of us joined a new group of friends that no one ever would have expected, and some that we all knew was coming. Many of us had to get the j-word: a job. Even trivial matters will stick out from high school-the first time failing a test, the first time actually having to study to pass a class, the first time being on a sports team, or the first time that we didn’t make the cut for something we wanted.

But most importantly, high school was about having a good time, no matter what we were doing or what had happened. We learned, above all, to make the best of everything we had, be that little or lot. I learned, in the words of Fredrich Nietzsche that “We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once; And we should consider every truth false that was not accompanied by at least one laugh.”

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. And every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph.” However, as good or bad as high school was, it is not the end. We are continuing on in our chosen fields, whether that is college, going into the workforce, or mooching off of the parents. We are excited for what our futures hold, the experiences that adulthood will bring; the hardships and the good times. More friends are going to made, and we are going to venture out and try new things, even though we know we probably shouldn’t be.
As we are dreaming of the future, our mothers sit there proudly telling whoever will listen “that’s my baby!“ even though everybody already knows. Fathers are grinning proudly knowing that their wallets are soon to be hurting. Older siblings are remembering their own graduations and younger sibling are counting down the years until their time comes. But still we know that this is our time and we need to live it up.

As you all very well know, we have worked hard and learned a lot. We haven’t worked ourselves away just to stay inside our entire lives and do nothing. This is the time for us to break out! So don’t forget we’ve all got unfinished business, our stories are yet to completely unfold and the tales of our lives must be told.

Thanks for the memories, good night, good luck, and God Bless.