7 Graduation Clichés
May 12, 2014 Shenanigans 8 comments KGayton14
I took the liberty of searching the clichés of a high school graduation piece so we can all reflect upon the hilarity of each and get all of their uses out before graduation.
Cliché No. 1- “You are the future”/ “The future is in your hands” Of course you are the future! So is the class behind us and the class behind them. That’s the thing about the future, it just keeps coming whether you want it to or not, and then it passes over you and someone else becomes the future. Thats how it has always worked.
Cliché No. 2- “Your education is just beginning” Okay, so do the 12 years of my life that I spent in school before just meant nothing, or…? I mean, if that’s the case why don’t we just skip over the first 12 years and go right to college at 18? That way, we could spend those 12 years working and saving up money so that college is paid for by the time we go. Then everyone could afford whatever education they wanted! That would be a foolproof plan except for the fact that I’ve been learning in school for 12 years and that does mean something, so actually, my education is just continuing.
Cliché No. 3- “You did it!” This said at graduation just infuriates me, of course we did it, I’m not just sitting here for my health, I’m sitting here to get my diploma.
Cliché No. 4- “The Graduation Song” by Vitamin C being played as a graduation song. Clichéd graduation songs are a whole other subject but as I feel this is the MOST bromidic I strongly felt it should be mentioned so as no lyrics “accidentally” find their way into the body paragraphs of a commencement speech.
Cliché No. 5- “These are the best days of your life” All I can say to this is God, I hope not. Not only would that be very unfortunate, it would be very anticlimactic. If I live to be 100 I have approximately 83 years of life left to live, if these four years are the best years of my life, what do I have to look forward to in the future? It can’t all be downhill from here so please don’t scare all of us and say it will.
Cliché No. 6- Any spoken definition of what the word “graduation” means. I believe we are all aware that graduation is defined as “the receiving or conferring of an academic degree or diploma.” But that’s what graduation is I would love to hear what graduation means to you and the class as a whole in a speech not how Webster defines it.
Cliché No. 7.- “We are standing in the threshold of tomorrow” And so is everybody else that is alive on our graduation night. I understand the tomorrow is a metaphor for the rest of our lives or something, but the previous comment still applies. Everyone is on the threshold of tomorrow and has the opportunity to take up the reigns of their life and create new beginnings for themselves.
There are many more clichés that I could spend pages and pages discussing. I believe that one of the greatest, hardest, lessons that high school teaches you is the importance of being yourself, and speaking from the heart. Your own original words for our unique situation in high school will be much more meaningful and moving than some copy and pasted derivative from the internet and when you are standing in front of a group of people who you’ve gone to school with for years, that’s what we all deserve, because in the long run, we’re all feeling elated that we’ve made it this far.
8 Comments
Kayla, this is great. So many aspects of graduation are so repetitive and annoying, it’s time to switch it up a bit. This also gave me some ideas for my speech, so thank you:b
THANK YOU. I’m glad at least one person shares my opinion on this. It’s sort of verbal plagiarism and it disappoints me that people sort of say the same thing as everyone else and have little to no personal insight when it matters the most. I’ll be thinking about this during graduation!
This is excellent , you nailed it right on the head. every group somehow fits, although some of them are annoying like said and personal insight is good. I will be pondering this on graduation day.
I read this entire post in your voice as if you were yelling. I loved it. It really is infuriating listening to all of the cliches that everyone thinks are witty or cool or what have you, but having it written in a way that it seems as though you’re pissed off about it makes it all the more funny.
I love this post. It makes me laugh because there have been so many times where I have said at least one of these. It is funny to read about them right now, because we know most of these will take place at our very own graduation. Well done, Kayla!
This is so true! Funny I can hear you reading this with your sarcastic voice and over exaggerating everything you say! Great job writing this, was fun to read!
This was pretty funny to read because I feel the same way.People are always saying things like that and its about time somebody said something about it. Great Job!
There are so many cliches when it comes to graduating, but what can we expect? It’s not like we’re the first class that has ever graduated from high school. Graduation is going to be lame and boring, but it literally doesn’t matter cause we did it! Class of 2k14!!