rockinlibrarian | A Few Words for the Graduates (and other teenagers)

A few months back I was thinking about Successful Alumni who get asked to speak at their old schools' commencement ceremonies, and, as daydreams are wont to go, I wondered what I would say, if I became a Bestselling Author or, you know, Librarian of the World or something, and the administration of good ol' Derry Area High decided to call me back for an Inspiring Speech. What could I share that a new high school graduate would really need to hear? What occurred to me next jumped out of the realm of daydreams entirely and into the Dead Serious. This is absolutely what I need to tell a graduating high school class. I don't know if I can wait until I become Successful to share it. So, because it's High School Graduation season, and today is the 15th anniversary of my own graduation, I'm going to type it up here. For Graduates, and for anybody.

*AHEM*

Dear Graduates;

I've been asked to speak to you today because I once sat where you're sitting, and now I've gone on to do great things, so now I'm a role model when once I was a new Derry Grad like you. I suppose I'm expected to say something nostalgic, like My years at Derry were the best years of my life, but they weren't. Quite the opposite usually. Oh, I have great memories of band trips and musicals and SPEAR excursions and the like, but that wasn't typical. See, I had this problem, in my early childhood, of being both extremely smart and extremely sensitive. I was the kid who pointed out when other people were Doing it Wrong, and the one who would stop the game in gym class if it was getting too rough. You can imagine what elementary school was like for a crybaby nerd girl. By middle school I'd had enough of the taunting, the pranking, the shunning, the wicked laughter, so I tucked myself away from it all. Withdrew. By the time I was where you are now, I'd been voted NOT Most Likely to Succeed, or Most Likely to be Giving this Speech to You.... but Shyest. I'd learned to hide a little too well. But even though I hid, I never shook the old labels. When anyone remembered to notice me, they remembered the crybaby nerd-girl.

And that may have been the end of the story-- me, just another victim of bullying, woe is me, tra la la-- if I hadn't, in 11th grade, met a 10th grader named Angie.

Angie was brilliant. She could make up poetry-- funny, rhyming haiku-- off the top of her head. She wrote hilarious stories in which classmates and teachers met grisly fates at the Grand Canyon and McDonalds. She'd speak in foreign accents-- GOOD ones-- and fool strangers into thinking she was actually an exchange student. She never said the obvious thing, but the thing that took the obvious one step further, into the crazy and genius and perfect. She thrilled at spontaneous lunacy, like unplanned road trips to Indiana County for ice cream, or like the time in college when she found an abandoned fence post on the side of the road, brought it back to the dorm, painted it psychedelic colors, then set it up on display in the dorm lobby anonymously dedicated to her R. A. But that's college. We need to get back to high school, when I'd only just met Angie, but I already knew she was the most amazing, creative, hilarious, FASCINATING person I had ever encountered.

She was also the single most unpopular girl in school.

Sure, the bullies had their excuses. Of course they did. There were necessary prejudices so OBVIOUS to them, based on looks or weight or gender expectations, and why this made it so important for them to TORMENT her I will never understand. I was furious. I was furious, frustrated, and something else: for the first time in my life, I actually felt SORRY for the bullies.

It's not that I condoned their behavior. I hated it from the bottom of my soul. But I couldn't help thinking about WHAT THEY WERE MISSING. Couldn't they see how BRILLIANT Angie was? Didn't they realize what they were missing out on, not befriending someone as fun and creative as this? Didn't they know they were willfully turning their backs on what might have been one of the greatest friends they would ever have?

The story does get better. In college, surrounded by new people who took the time to get to know and love us for who we really were, Angie was even, dare I say, POPULAR. (I wouldn't go so far for myself. I think I was just The One With the Kermit in the Window and the crazy box of 45 records for the radio show). But I could never shake the memory of how tragically she'd been misread in high school. And so I made it a goal in my writing to show characters who are always more complex and amazing than everyone thinks they are. Because it isn't just Angie-- it's everyone. Later in my life, as Facebook became more popular, I caught glimpses of where all my old classmates are today. Maybe I hadn't been a bully, but I'd had impressions of who I thought my classmates were, only to discover there was so much about them I didn't know: interests in the obscure careers they now have, working as advocates for rare causes, unique hobbies of all sorts, life stories I could never have imagined for them. All these people, so unique, so accomplished, so much MORE than whatever they appeared to be in school.

So this is what I've decided you really need to hear from me today, as you begin a new era of your lives. This speech is NOT a rant against bullying, it's about YOU embracing the You you really are. In the course of going to school, you've all been placed in some sort of box, with some sort of label: the geek, the jock, the queer, the skater, the cheerleader, the slut, the follower, the goody-goody, the pot-head, the fat one, the brain, the class clown, the kid who wet his pants that time in 5th grade, the idiot... the bully. Maybe the label's accurate, maybe it's not. Maybe you're comfortable in your box, but more than likely you're a little constricted. I'm here to invite you out of that box. Feel free! Take whatever pieces of that box you like along with you if you want (I'm still a self-professed Nerd, and proud), but remember that you are MORE than that box, than that label. You are a complex, unique, irreplaceable individual, and chances are that very few, if any, of your classmates here know the extent of your true self. So don't let them define who you are anymore. Define yourself. Decide who you want to be, and be that person. No one else's expectations of you matter. Get to know yourself, then introduce yourself to the world.

Everyone has a unique spot in life that only you can fill. Find that spot, YOUR spot, not the spot these people who barely know you have wanted to shove you into. Find the spot where you truly feel at home. But don't forget, as you're finding your own place, that everyone else is doing the same-- and there's always more to anyone you meet than the first label you see.

Thank you, congratulations, good luck.