Commencement Speech

Hello and good afternoon to all of those listening. I find myself in an unfortunate circumstance, as I do not really want to be talking about anything to anyone, but here I am. I am not here because of you listeners I am here talking strictly because I have to be not because I want to be. With all that being said I still have to talk about something that is relatively interesting but most importantly fills the time slot. Therefore what else to talk about than the attention one gets from having a commencement speech. 

I am very glad that I am not actually giving this commencement speech to actual relevant listeners, rather just some people that unfortunately clicked on this flipgrid video. However if you are still unfortunately listening. I might as well continue on. I thought about commencement speeches as a whole and have listened to a few on my own time. Some can be rather interesting and filled with witty humor. However I never thought that I would have to actually do one. Personally I never really wanted to do one either. With all this being said once it was announced that I had to do one, I was of course very very overjoyed with excitement, as who wouldn’t want to post a commencement speech to flipgrid and have their peers listen to it.

 The real reason I am so unenthusiastic is because simply the attention it brings upon me is unwanted and unneeded. Throughout my four years at Oak Hill High school I found myself constantly trying to avoid stepping in the spotlight of attention. Now it was not because I actually cared what any of my classmates thought, rather it was because I simply did not deem it necessary.  Who really wants to be class president? No one, as initially it would look good on someone’s resume, but in positions of relevancy the people demand effort and output. While yes this initial attention brought forth from being class president could have been nice the negative attention far outways it. People will always find an excuse to not like something, especially if everyone else thinks that way. That is really the only reason we had three different class presidents. Not because either one of them was actually bad. Just people find a reason to make them seem bad. The reason I ran my senior year is because I would not have to deal with the consequences, the negative attention brought upon me would be irrelevant because I would be off to college and none of the positions I ran for really mattered anyway. They were truly just something to put on my resume, but isn’t that what everyone else does. Now with that being said I still did not have any interest in speaking at graduation or doing a commencement speech as it simply seemed like a complete waste of time. 

Once again school or high school I should say is filled with plenty of moments of displeasure, but it is also filled with plenty of moments of euphoria. My goal throughout high school my freshman year was to survive, my sophomore year was settling in, my junior year was perfecting the craft and my senior year to… Survive….. The COVID-19 pandemic as well as graduate. The only real way I expected to make it through all this was to control the controllable, which for me meant not running for class office as that could bring unwanted attention upon myself. With all that being said this commencement speech, while it was not glorious or insanely comical it is truly how I feel about the attention that can be brought forth from things like this and how those things to me were always deemed as trivial and unnecessary. Thank you for your time and good luck to those going off to college. 

Photo on Foter.com