Graduation Speeches

Many of you attended my graduation ceremony on Friday. Quite frankly, I thought the whole thing was a waste of time. However, I won't be addressing that opinion in this blog. No, the purpose of this blog is to show a taste of what could have been. 

I was asked, among others, to prepare a graduation speech and participate in a speech-off. It was basically a death match, though I refrained from killing any of the other candidates. Instead, I killed the time honored tradition of traditional graduation speeches. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present: my graduation speech.

B.F. Skinner once said, “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” Incidentally, B.F. stands for Burrhus Frederick, which is arguably one of the most comical names I’ve ever heard. But who was this Skinner man, the man behind the Burrhus? He was a psychologist, who drove patients insane by saying confusing things like, “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”

No, seriously, Professor Skinner was an influential psychologist, and a very important man. Here on Graduation Day, we also aspire to become important men. Except for those of us who are women, who aspire to become important women.
 

As we leave Mountain View, we ask ourselves, how can we become important men and women? My guess is that it has something to do with education surviving after what has been learned has been forgotten.
 

But what does that mean? When the Graduation Committee gave me this quote, they essentially gave me a blank check, allowing me to run away with the interpretation however I pleased.
 

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” Perhaps it means we’ve already got our education, and now we should try to forget as much as possible. Perhaps the Grinch said it best when he declared, “Maybe education doesn’t come from a store, maybe education…perhaps…means a little bit more.”
 

And perhaps it does mean a little bit more. Here at Mountain View, much like the Grinch, we’ve puzzled till our puzzlers were sore, we’ve done school work till we couldn’t, no more. Forgive the grammar, English teachers, I just felt the need to write poetry, which is something else we’ve done here at Mountain View.
 

But what will happen when we’ve forgotten what we’ve puzzled, and what we’ve studied? What will remain of our high school careers? Might I suggest, in the words of B.F. Skinner, that “education, is what survives?” What will remain is our memories of the good times here at Mountain View, the friends that we’ve made, and the wonderful administration. What getting an education has taught us are the things that no book can teach, not even the Bible. We will have learned how to learn, and we will have gained confidence in ourselves. The skills we have developed, whether they be music, drama, dance, foreign language, business, computers, or underwater basket weaving, will follow us throughout our lives, whether or not we make a career of them. While the actual substance of what we have learned, the quadratic formula, the laws of thermodynamics, or iambic pentameter, may be forgotten, the life lessons taught, the talents cultivated, and the myriad things that make high school high school have intertwined to make what is called an education, which will define who we are for the rest of our lives.
 

So, hopefully, our lives have grown through gaining an education these past few years. However, our hearts may not have grown three times like the Grinch. As for rhymes, maybe this’ll do in a pinch.

I’ll talk no more, my speech is through,

Congratulations, senior class of Mountain View.