Graduation

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Remember, if you have made it that far, your High School graduation? I have conferred with some of my fellow graduates from that night in Moultrie many years agone.

This much I do remember. Well, some if it.

We all remember a few details. None of us remember the exact same thing. By piecing together the memories we have, we can come to some sort of an approximate idea of what graduation night was probably like.

Talk about an inexact science.

As we lay out the graduation section at the office (from which I am playing hooky in order to write this blog), I look over the seniors. I have known most of them ever since they started school. I have written about them and taken their pictures for 13-14 years now.

I have watched them laugh, cry, run, sit, complain, rejoice and run through many other emotions.

I wonder what I should tell them as they approach this singular day in their life. I confess I do not know.

Platitudes and aphorisms a plenty come to mind.

Mindless jabber.

I could discuss the state of the world, their future, etc. What can I tell them which they don't already know?

Say what?

As if they will listen to me anyway.

I speak from experience, having once been a teenager and ignoring advice and wisdom from those older than me.

I remember my Grandpa, upon seeing a 5th of whisky in my truck the summer before I hauled out to college, saying, "Don't think you can go off to college and get drunk all the time."

Ahem.

The one bit of advice I did take was from Dad. "Go to a liberal arts college. This will be the last time in your life you'll have so much." He was telling me to avoid the hard schools, like Georgia Tech, because after graduation the world was gonna pound on me. He bade me eschew major responsibilities, which I did.

Most of the advice I was given I forgot and ignored.

So in that spirit I tell the Class of 2012 the following:

Go ye forth. Make mistakes and learn from them. People who do not make mistakes are dead. People who do not learn from their mistakes are soon dead.