Chapter 2- The Meaningful Speech
“Fellow students, teachers and staff member, and parents today is the day we leave the institution that has taught us so much from the first day we walked through those double doors till yesterday the last day I or my fellow peers will ever see the inside of one of these classrooms again.” I started but stopped for a second to take a breath.
“In life there are so many doors that we have to decide to walk through or just ignore. High school is a door that we can’t ignore, you have to walk through that door no matter. No matter how hard it is to get through it, we have to so we can survive the real world. My fellow students, you and I have finally walked through the door of high school, and made it out alive. All of our doors are different, I have a door that leads me to Dartmouth and medical school. Taylor Murphy has a door that leads him to Rivier college and an engineering degree. We all have a million doors and we must all walk through them, whether we want to or not.
In writing this speech I spent many seconds of many hours agonizing on what I should write, should I write about experiences I had at this fine establishment? Should I write about people and how they helped me on my hard journey to get to this moment. But then I realized something, I realized that there are sixty seconds in every minutes, sixty minutes in every hour, and twenty four hours in every day. Don’t waste a single second of those days. I realized that we should not waste our time trying to earn money, but waste our money trying to waste time.
The hard part of life is now over, the last four years we have spent cramming for tests, going without sleep, they’re finally over. Embrace the rest of life like there is no tomorrow. Walk through the millions of doors of life and never look back. Don’t regret a single moment. And remember this quote from George Bernard Shaw, “A life spent making mistakes is not only honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
So make millions of mistakes, but don’t make the mistake of doing nothing. Do something extraordinary and make it memorable.” I finished looking out to the crowd and seeing a smile on everyone’s face except for Ricky’s of course.
“So will the class of 2012 please stand with me, and move your tassels to the right side of your cap!” I yelled smiling. “We’re graduated!” I added yelling while taking my cap off and throwing it into the air. Probably around three hundred caps followed behind going into the air.
After that I walked off stage and was swept off my feet by Taylor. “That was amazing! You were amazing!” he said spinning me around. I couldn’t help but smile and kiss his passionately like it was the last time I would be able to do that. But I knew it wasn’t, I know I have the rest of my life to kiss him and I will enjoy every second of it.
I pulled away a minute later to see both of my parents smiling. My mom had the camera out and was probably snapping pictures of me and Taylor kissing. That empty feeling I was talking about, I don’t feel it at this moment. Right now I feel complete, but it’ll go away and I’ll back to that stupid empty feeling.
“That was a great speech!” my dad said giving me a hug. I saw Ricky looking at me from a few yards away. He still has that ‘I hate you face’ on. My dad let me go a minute later, I looked to my mom and saw her crying. But when I looked back to where I saw Ricky he wasn’t there.
“Congratulations Meredith!” my mother said giving me a quick hug. It was sincere like she truly did mean it.
“Well we better get going, our reservations are a six and its 5:30.” my dad said checking his watch. We all nodded in agreement. We followed them out to the parking lot.
“We’ll meet you there.” I said giving each of my parents another hug. They nodded and headed off to my dad’s car. I grabbed Taylor’s hand and pulled him back into the school. We ran hand in hand until we got to the spot I was looking for.
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