Words of Wisdom to the SHS Class of 2024
(It's that time of year again.)
Background: Every year from 2003 to 2011, I contributed my "Words of Wisdom" to the "Staff Advice" portion of the Senior issue of the Stevenson Spotlight.
Then, like many newspapers, The Spotlight went on hiatus in 2012 (even if it had a resurgence in 2014–16), so I still needed to share my wisdom somewhere. I've gone longer form in recent years, and well, since the cost of digital ink is low, I'm OK with that.
But I still wished the Seniors who friended me on Facebook good luck. So, here are my Words of Wisdom for the Class of 2024.
My sincere congratulations and a fond farewell to the Class of 2024. My standard disclaimer to begin: Be careful. Be safe. Be smart. And remember, only you can prevent forest fires.
By late May, I have a solid sense of what form my remarks to the departing senior class will look and feel like. I've written a few of these; I've written on patience, Abbey Road, the journey, learning experiences, fear, friendships, knowledge, failure, ghosts, and liminality. Some of the issues for me lie in that I've covered a lot of the ground that a commencement speaker might only have to do this once in their life if even that. When I'm linking to my back catalog, it partly tells me I can't reheat some leftovers and call it a balanced meal. But I like a challenge and so here we are again.
Learning is a lifelong process. That’s the easy, catchy slogan that schools love to throw at you as students. Stevenson’s mission statement of “Striving for excellence; learning for life,” so it should not be too new to you that this sentiment is out there. A lot of that sentiment is put toward an image of a future version of you voraciously reading books, newspapers, and magazines and watching documentaries and doing things that look and feel like school, because that’s the model of learning that you’ve grown up with. There is nothing wrong with that, I say that as a person with a 2,000+ day reading streak on my Kindle. But I think you’re ready to see a different version of learning, one where you find that there are more people out there who do not set out to teach you something, but find you as a receptive audience, willing to learn.
Being open to new experiences and ideas is one of the easiest cliches to call back on when giving advice. If one keeps an open mind, it’s easier to find experiences you never considered or find yourself in places you never thought you might end up. There is a risk in that, of course, sometimes those rabbit holes lead to dangerous places, sure, but danger is the price we pay for exploring a wider world, or as the adage claims: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” But it is an open mind and heart open to the new and different and might I even say strange, the world is so much more interesting.
Your experiences define you, but they do not define everyone else. So, you must find a meaningful and genuine way to share your experience with others without forcing your opinions or beliefs on them and hope that they can do the same for you. If that sounds difficult, congratulations, it is. But it’s worth it. It’s so very worth it. The world is a rich and brilliant place, but it must be said that you will encounter things that trouble you, that stagger you, that give you pause. That is the price of being open-minded; you don’t get to pick the nasty things to avoid, because they are out there. The goal is to form rational rejections of those ideas because you’ve learned enough to know better.
But it is not enough to know or even to understand. You must do something with that knowledge. You must turn thought into action in the hope that your actions are good and useful to yourself and the world around you. That can feel really challenging on a day-to-day basis. There are so many insignificant things that need to be taken care of that you can lose sight of this. But it becomes one of those things that is second nature after a while. If you commit yourself to acting in this way, it can become like blinking, you just do it and don’t always realize you’re doing it. It doesn’t mean you’ll be perfect; it doesn’t mean you’ll make the correct and perfect choice every time. In all seriousness, in some situations there will not be a perfect choice, just a series of flawed choices where you must decide among the least bad outcomes or hope that you made the right choice based on incomplete information. It’s impossible to know if you’re always doing the exact right thing, but I have come to believe that trying to do the right thing is the best choice.
In closing, there’s a whole lot of undiscovered country laying out before you. The paths will be winding, the weather unpredictable, the companions everchanging. But be open to what you might encounter on the journey, and I think it will be even more rewarding. Good luck, Class of 2024.