Graduation Speech: The Best Four Years of My Life! :: Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

Hi, my name is Pat and I would like to start today by thanking the seniors of 2012 for choosing me to speak today. It is truly my honor. You know, it is really strange how quickly time passes, after spending my whole childhood wishing I was an adult, now here we are and it's a little hard to grasp. It feels like just yesterday I was standing here in the same position at eighth grade graduation. Ahh, middle school, such a joyous time for all of us, free of maturity and not a care in the world. The biggest decisions I ever had to make then was deciding which group to stand with at passing time and choosing which shirt from my extensive collection of Stussy and No Feat apparel to wear. We were all naive to the danger that lurked just around the corner. We were unaware that the carefree world we lived in was about to come crashing to the ground in a blazing inferno of real school work and responsibility ... otherwise known as high school. I am only kidding. It's just when you're young it is easy to get caught up in the here and now, and hard to look to the future. I thought high school would never end and now here we are on the brink of having to go out into the world and actually support ourselves!? I now feel like I never really appreciated my time here and never realized what a valuable experience it would be for me. I spent so much time complaining about high school, I never really had anytime left over to just enjoy myself. There are so many experiences from high school we will all carry with us through out our whole lives and will ultimately help determine what kind of person we are. By the time the end of my junior year rolled around I was ready to get away, so I enrolled in the Running Start program. I felt I had outgrown all that school activities had to offer and I wanted to just get on with my life. But as many teachers have clearly demonstrated over the last four years; you never get too old or too mature to have a little fun in high school. It took me this year to realize this. It was around homecoming that I started to feel a little left out.