(as in if)
by Else
It’s really great to be here, speaking. Honestly, if you’d told me a year ago that I’d be doing this, I never would have believed you. And not just because I wouldn’t think I’d be prepared. But obviously the class wanted me to speak. I’ve never seen our class agree on something so unanimously. Honestly, you could ask the class to vote on what color the sky is, and at least a few people would vote against blue. Olivier would probably bring up something about subjective reality, and insist that really the sky is a particularly interesting shade of pink.
Part of my selection was probably because nobody else really wanted to speak. They’ve all done declamations, so they’ve filled their quota for the year. When I‘m the only one not avoiding work, you know people don’t want to do it. Some of it was probably from my performance in the debate earlier in the year. If I’m not mistaken, the mock election that followed showed more votes for the Green party than did the actual election. A few in the class took public speaking with me. I did end up getting that bag of cement1, by the way. And of course, there’s the fact that I’ve been here the longest. Rajiv would’ve been here longer, but he was late on the first day.
Fourteen years, I’ve been here. When I came here in 1995, the school had a battalion2, not a house system. The eighth grade hadn’t been born yet3. The pool was practically brand new, and the girls, who were still a separate school4, hadn’t built their library or their new gym. I saw the dorm come and go5. When I came here, eBay was brand new, Duke Nukem Forever hadn’t been announced yet, there was no Google, and everyone was raving about this new thing called the PlayStation. On the plus side, there’s probably someone a few years younger than me who will have been here for fifteen years by the time he graduates, thanks to ECA6. The poor, poor kid.
But of course, what I suppose should be the more to the topic of my speech is how I’ve seen you all grow and mature, and how we’ve had so many good times over the years and all that cheesy stuff./s And I’ve seen my fellow students come into this place, and seen the smart ones leave. And then the indecisive ones come back again. I’ve seen people progress from being young and naive to still pretty young and still kind of naive.
And I’m not the only one here who’s ending an error. Sorry, era. Whether you’ve been here for fourteen years or one year, we’re all moving on. Some of us to college, some of us not. And that’s okay. Not everybody should go to college right away. Some people shouldn’t at all./gen Whatever fits you best. If this school has taught me anything, it’s that sometimes the normal path is exactly the wrong one to take.4 And if I teach you anything, it’s that you should make your own decisions. But don’t listen to me. Make that decision yourself.
All meta-cognitive paradoxes aside, right after I was chosen to do this speech, a bunch of people came up to me and said, “make it cynical. Make it sarcastic. Make fun of the school.” And I thought, awesome! Easy material! “Like taking candy from a baby… or… giving candy to a baby… I don’t know. Something to do with candy and babies.”7 But anyway, the first thing that came to mind was the house system8. I mean, the Harry Potter jokes are just too easy. The difference, though, is in Harry Potter they actually care about their houses. I honestly don’t remember who won the house cup, and it was what, a week ago? I mean, it’s great to have a day off from classes every once in a while. I think we can use more of those. And the t-shirts wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t such seizure inducing colors, or didn’t have the meaningless buzzwords on the back in huge bold letters. Leadership in the Community, for a Paradigm of Synergy, and a commentary on asininity. Fun fact: there are forty five words in the Academy mission statement, three of which relate to education. So if you wonder why our class, and really our generation as a whole is so cynical, that’s why. Not just the mission statement here, but the attitude of our elders in general (more so out of school, to be fair) seems to be that it’s more important to seem like you’re doing a good job than it is to actually do a good job. Certainly Mr. Wimmer can attest that the corporations and the marketers love to say what good they’re doing for the community, while dumping toxic chemicals in our water supply. And so our generation is lead to wonder, whenever people do good, are they doing it because they want to do good, or is it a marketing ploy?
And I’m not the valedictorian, I’m not even sure who the valedictorian is. I’m not sure the valedictorian knows who the valedictorian is. So I’ll try not to preach too much. Don’t do good because it’ll look good. Don’t give money to a group just to shut them up. Don’t vote for someone because she looks good on TV, or you’d like to have a beer with him. Do good because you want to. Give money because you like what the organization does. Vote for someone because you, not some pundit, not a commentator, not a union leader, party leader, plumber, whatever, but you, believe that he or she is the best choice.
Now, I’d like to pass the podium over to Doctor Ebert. He’s been a great teacher, and done a wonderful job, and is the winner of this year’s senior book award.
I chose this to read aloud to the class, because of course I did, and it did well ↩
When I was a young boy, my father took me into the city, to be a marching band… ↩
It was called *counts on fingers* second form? iirc? ↩
there was a dorm with like 3 kids ↩
Early Childhood at the Academies, what they called pre-pre-k ↩
stealing jokes from obscure youtube videos is how I won that debate ↩
which was introduced to replace battalion as a school schtick ↩