This is Pastor Tim’s article tha appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, May 7, 2024
I want to write an article to kids who will soon be graduating from high school. I confess here at the outset that I am a long time removed from being in your place. In 1993, when I graduated from high school, the parents of the kids who are graduating were not even in middle school yet. But as an old geezer who you might believe doesn’t know anything about the world today, let me share with you a few things that might help you in your last few weeks of high school.
Many of the people you are going to graduate with are people that you will never see again. Regardless of what you are thinking now, that is a bad thing. At 18, you have spent the vast majority of your life with your fellow students, and you are about to walk the stage at graduation and never see many of them again. That will hit you after it is too late. I know, you think that you don’t like some of them but most of that is just being immature and not realizing how big the world actually is. Do not carry a single grudge across the stage with you at graduation, I promise you it isn’t worth it.
Graduating from high school is the biggest change you will make in your entire life. It is a bigger change than getting married, changing jobs, even graduating from college is not as big of a change as this is. In our culture, graduating from high school is one of the biggest rights of passage, maybe second only to getting your driver’s license. Over the course of the next few weeks, you are going to get a very small taste of what your new life will be like. Schoolwork will start to subside, classes will start to let out, and you just had Prom last weekend. (You all looked great, by the way).
There will be no time ever in your life where you will be celebrated more than you will be during this last month of your senior year. You have a lot of special events at school, including the Memorial Games (which I will be serving as judge), Prom, scholarships, graduation, parties, and a whole bunch of other things. As much celebrating as is coming your way, the best advice I can give you is to put on a spirit of cooperation and don’t make your mom have a stroke trying to get your graduation party together. I know it may not look like it, but she is doing it for you, so appreciate how crazy she is making your dad trying to get it together. It will be fun and there will be cake. Do whatever you can to allow everyone to enjoy it.
One thing about high school graduation is that it is the first few baby steps toward the direction the rest of your life is going. While all of your futures are going to be awesome, your futures also will look very different. Unfortunately, some futures are celebrated more than others. Everybody is impressed by college aspirations because they are considered better than people entering the workforce. If you are paying attention to what is going on in colleges these days, I question why that is the preferred future. Kids are protesting on college campuses with no idea that these riots are popping up on campuses to correspond to an election year. Those college kids are just being foolish.
To those of you who are going on to work rather than going to college, your choice has as much honor and dignity as the other kids going to college. Besides, someone is going to need to have a job so that the government can forgive those student loans. It takes all of us to make a society function and there is no shame in getting a job and putting forth effort to provide for yourself and your family. College may help you do that, but it is not the only way. To those of you who will be working at jobs and building careers, thank you for making our communities function. We could not do it without you. Even though you may not get the recognition, celebration, or bragging rights of the kids who have rehearsed reciting their college plans to every person who asks, know that the work you do makes the world go round.
Graduating seniors, enjoy this last month. I still remember my special May of 1993 like it was yesterday and I graduated in a class of 42 people. The next 18 years will take you a whole lot further than the first 18 did, even though it doesn’t seem like that now. The opportunity to shape the world in the way you want it is within your reach. As someone who will eventually be a retiree in that world you build, I am praying for you.