After spending years of grueling class time together most high school seniors want to spend their graduation day hanging out and celebrating educational freedom with their classmates. There is nothing I would have liked more than to do just that on the day I graduated. Unfortunately while others in my class were hanging out at the principals breakfast that morning, I was at the local university attending class and preparing for my finals the next day.
In between Health 101 and my U.S. Constitution class, I was at least able to attend graduation practice, which really should have been called the lecture on, “What Not to Do” that evening. There was no actual practicing involved. Anyone who was deserving of graduating should have known everything that the administrators droned on about anyway, so as usual when sitting through a boring lecture my mind drifted off to other things.
Throughout high school career I would have described myself as your typical overachiever. I participated in almost everything from sports, to the arts, to an elected position in student government. I never really considered myself popular or part of the “in” crowd, but I thought I knew most of the people in my graduating class. There were only a little over two hundred people in my graduating class, but now here, sitting in my alphabetically assigned seat, I sat between two people I had never seen in my entire life. Not only had I never seen them before, but they kind of scared me. I couldn’t help but think it must have been a fluke where the two gruesome looking cowboys surrounding me had gone to some disciplinary school to get the required credits and had transferred back to the high school at the last minute to graduate. Then again, maybe I didn’t recognize them because the crew from the back parking lot only attended the minimum amount of school to actually get a diploma. I will never know because I knew that after tonight I would never see them again, so there was no point in starting a conversation with them now. All these years I had viewed myself as an invincible rock who would create large ripples in the pond of life. In my mind, my life held meaning through the influence I had on others. Now for the first time, sitting between these two guys I’d never seen before, I realized my perceived influence was nothing more than an illusion. It was clear to me that instead of being a great ripple maker of great influence, I was really just a tiny piece phytoplankton trying unsuccessfully to reverberate around the ocean.
I noticed that some of the bigger fish from my part of the ocean were on stage. Something inside me went thud. That is were my influence used to be. I used to be one of those fish. How did I move down in the food cycle? What was I doing floating around down here with the other phytoplankton?
Sitting on stage was the concert choir comprised of roughly forty students. I was in choir all four years of high school. I was in that choir on the stage for three out of four years. I had been sitting on that stage for the graduation of the two classes that preceded mi ne. I was one of only nine girls selected to be in the advanced modern show choir, and now here I was sitting in the audience. What happened? For the first time, it really hit me that I had chosen to give that all up. I had been going to early college for months now and it hadn’t saddened me a bit that I didn’t have to show up to the high school building and deal with all the drama – until this very moment.
From early childhood it had always been engrained in me that I would go to college. So, when all my high school credits were well above the amount I needed for graduation, I figured it was only natural to get a head start on my college education. But now, just sitting in the audience, the choice to start college early was really starting to bother me.
The part of me that went thud was now starting to ache. I knew there were people up on stage who did not want to be there, under class students who were only there because it was part of their grade. They were fidgeting and rambunctious. You could read their dislike from the back of the auditorium. Were they aware they held a precious position sitting on that stage? Were they aware they were creating someone’s memory? I doubt it; they just wanted to be anywhere but there. At that moment, I would have done anything to trade places with any one of them.
The lecture regarding appropriate behavior soon finished and I hurried off to my Constitution class. During the entire hour, I found it difficult to concentrate on anything the professor said. My inability to focus now was different from graduation practice, now I actually needed and wanted to pay attention, but I could not bring myself to do it. I kept thinking about attending the senior sponsored picnic after class, so as soon as the professor finished talking I buzzed out of class at up to the park. When I arrived there were about five people helping to gather up all the supplies. And it struck me, yet again, here were five people from my class that I did not recognize. Where was the planning committee members or the student government – people I knew? Who were these five people? For a moment I doubted whether or not I had gone to the right place, but there were remnants of crepe paper taped to the table that resembled our school colors. I could tell by the scattered ice cream wrappers and bits of chips on the ground and by the various nets and balls being collected that not too long ago there had been a large group of people celebrating there. It was just one more thing I missed out on. One more thing where I wasn’t part of the group.
I was beginning to feel that I did not belong to this graduating class, to the privileged group about to undertake one of the most looked forward to rites of passage. This day was not only the culmination of twelve years of school, but also the culmination of a month long calendar of special activities. I had not been able to share in the joy and sense of relief that my classmates were feeling. I had spent the last month preparing research papers and studying for finals.
Then I remembered how everyone at practice was mumbling about who was going to whose party later that evening, but I had not been invited to go anywhere. I started to doubt that I had any friends in this graduating class or if they were all just merely acquaintances. I began to try to justify why I had not been invited; maybe people did not ask me because they assumed I had already been invited. I am the kind of person who needs to be specifically invited, so maybe it was my fault for assuming that since everyone around me was discussing a party that I was not included too. It was a normal thing for people to just make general announcements for everyone about parties and things, but no one said anything specific to me, not even, “Hey, which one are you going to?”
My life prior to high school had been terribly traumatic. In the summer before my freshman year, I ran away from my abusive, alcoholic mother to go live with my father and step-mother. Living in my father’s house had it’s own challenges because my step-mother never viewed me or treated me as an equal to her other children. I essentially had no family life. School had been life; my reason for living and moment by moment I felt I was losing my connection to what had been my life for the last four years.
It seemed the world was closing in around me and I was alone in my bubble whose surface would not come in contact with the outside world. Everyone was in their own bubbles, far away from mine, merging and coexisting, sharing this special day with their own friends and family members. My lack of interaction did not seem to be bothering anyone. No one called to see where I was. My life played no role in their bubble, so why would anyone even care if I continued on with the rest of the planned activities of the day. I would just be another face in the crowd. No one would even notice if I did not cross the stage. But I couldn’t help but feel it was something I was expected to do. Graduation was the only thing everyone had talked about all year long. Graduation is the only meaning and purpose in life to a senior.
Thinking about all of life’s expectations, I went back to my empty house on snob hill and locked myself in my room. I sat on my bed and stared at the phone waiting for someone, anyone, to call, even if it was just an aunt or friend of the family to congratulate me. Heck, I probably would have been happy if a telemarketer called. With each tick of the clock I was growing more disparaged. Didn’t anyone wonder where I was or why hadn’t been hanging out all day? Finally, I called the boy whom I had dated for most of high school. Although we had officially been broken up for over a year, we still kinds of dated off and on. At the very least, I thought he’d be interested in talking to me, but he never answered the phone. As I sat hoped for him to call me back, I tried to open my books and study for my test, which was the intent behind going home in the first place, but the attempt was useless. Eventually, my sense of overwhelming disconnectedness and loss overtook me and eventually my tears rippled the pages of my book. Eventually, I gave up the struggle to try and focus and slept.
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