Graduation Speech: Act on What is Righteous :: Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

The world we live in is growing more distant and uncaring every day. Technology lures us in with promises of convenience and proceeds to separate us from personal attention, and the personal attention that we do get is often cold and indifferent. ATMs, Internet shopping and electronic checkout at the supermarket, all designed so that we can go through an entire day without having to face anyone. Even school research projects can be done entirely in front of a computer screen. While downloading music, checking your e-mail and instant-messaging your friends, you can find all that latest information on poverty, starvation and worldwide- epidemics. Every time we come together as a class we defy this new trend, and we have flourished in our adversity of it. A wealth of humanity, we share our ideas, our stories, our hopes and our dreams. We make lasting friendships and we clash in heated disagreements. We learn to listen to one another, building on our understanding of literature and history through others' observations and reactions. Why is it that we always start talking when the teacher turns their back? Why is it that we stay out in the hall chatting with one another until the second that - or a few minutes after - the bell rang? Why do we all know the story line to Dawson's Creek, even though only a few of us watched it? Why is it that Ms. Callaghan congratulated our class on keeping up lively discussion and a high energy up to the very last days of the school year? We crave contact, we crave each other's company, because more and more it is being taken away by what is convenient. All of us have helped each other evolve by taking part in human experience, sharing our differences. We have state-bound athletes and we have state-bound mathletes. We have Nate- squared, el Presidente and a human Swan. Our class has individuals who have already devoted themselves to a profession: kindergarten teachers, doctors, veterinarians, and in our Salutatorian's case: a door-to-door salesman. Because we are so diverse and because we love sharing this diversity, we have become strong. Soon many of us will be taking part in the formation of new classes. Despite what your parents may have said, the most important thing you will do at college will not be hitting the books or acing a test. It will be strengthening your personality - your individuality - through new friendships, new disagreements, new environments and new experiences.