For the past
eighteen years, our lives have been pretty smooth. Mom has faithfully made your
chocolate-chip pancakes for breakfast and dad has been your personal ATM
machine ensuring that you stay in the green. Friends have been ever faithful in
keeping alive the memory of that time you got hit in the face with a dodge ball
in P.E., and teachers have been even more faithful in ensuring our graduation
rate is one- hundred percent.
As
individuals, we have endured twelve years of emotional breakdowns, inadequate
pencil stubs, crumpled up pieces of paper (at this moment Mr. Burge would normally
make the statement that this could be a symbol of frustration), and have had late
night coffee shots to help keep us awake in order to finish that one essay we only
remembered to do at 11 p.m. As a class, we’re here. In this auditorium. In
these gowns. After four years of hard, well- earned work. We came to AACT in
search of a great education, and in return we now have a better chance at a
great future.
A future
filled with hope and dreams and accomplishments. And hot pockets. Because I
highly doubt that any of us will make our first million until our mid-twenties-
at the latest. But don’t allow yourself to be filled with greed for material
things. Life isn’t always about getting the girl or even becoming a world-
renowned film director… it is about doing what makes you happy and sharing that
happiness with the people around you.
As Marianne
Williamson once said: “We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? ... As we let our own light shine, we
unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated
from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Not only are
we the class of 2014, but we are the graduates of we made it.
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