What was your high school graduation like (read more)?

Congratulations on your achievement. This is a special time in you life. Treasure it! Most people don’t peak in high school though.

My own senior year in high school was a lot of fun. Sadly, I only attended the high school I graduated from my senior year so I didn’t have the kinds on long-time friendships most do. I did have a group of close fiends though. We did a lot of fun things together.

Also, my high school was huge. There were 640 plus in my graduating class. The ceremony itself was pretty boring to me. By that point, I was ready to move on.

I did not graduate, but I figure I could chip in something anyway.

Our high school’s graduation was pretty monumental in the way that it was the first graduating class to graduate my school, and that because it’s an Early College High School, many of the students graduated with either AA degrees or most of their general education (A through G requirements) out of the way. So it was pretty unique and new for our school.

But anyway, it was a small ceremony (about 40 people) and pretty quick. But I guess I can’t really speak for them on an emotional level, but coming from an underclassmen that knew almost all of them, it was an interesting experience to see how all of them acted around all of these people that they had been around for 4 years, or more. It was cool, actually. I just hope that my class will be like that. They all handled it well.

And congratulations, by the way.

Dear Marina; Welcome back. I am really happy to see that lovely starfish once again.

However, “close fiends” does sound alarming.

Gail, not only am I back, but my lackluster typing skills are back with me. While some might have termed us fiends, I did, of course, mean friends!

I find it an honor to be corrected by you, my vocabulary fiend and friend.

My class (‘98) was pretty cliquey. I thought some of those people would be my friends forever, but pre-Facebook I only kept in touch with two or three of them. No big loss, as life gets more and more interesting and I meet more and more interesting people as it goes on.

The graduation ceremony itself was boring. Lots of speeches and pomp. The parties afterward, however, were a blast. Have fun, and congratulations!

@Likeradar

We have an all-nighter grad night at a secret location…I’m curious.

Thanks for all the answers, everyone. :)

I had a lovely graduation. Most of the 200 classmates had been together since 7th grade and many since K. I arrived in third grade so felt as though I hung out with an extended family. Then as now, there were cliques, but many of them overlapped. In the fifties, life was gentler and less abrasive.

We also knew the siblings and parents.

And the recent reunions have been fun. However, I kept no close friends; everything changed as we all (or most of us) went on to college.

Congratulations! I wish you the very best in life and enjoy college!

My graduation was interesting and very, very hot. 100 degrees, on a football field in Central Florida. We were told (girls) to wear white dresses and white shoes…and it rained the night before. We had mud colored shoes before the end of it!

Our Principal was only into the football players and was retiring. He also had zero sense of humor or personality. He did recognize a few of us, though. I was in the top 5 of the class, so he did take the time to know our first name.

I’ll never forget when he stopped the ceremony and said, “To those in the bleachers, enough with the beach balls. This is not a celebration. This is a somber occasion. The end of their childhood.”

We all just laughed.

After it ended, there were parties, laughter and tears. The realization that you will not see some of these people, again – it’s very bittersweet. It’s okay, though, that is part of life. Do your best in life, enjoy and best wishes!

@cak

Ha…our principal is known for being strict and funny at the same time. He’ll say something clever and funny without laughing or smiling at all. It’s a weird combination. But he knows me personally so that makes him even cooler.

Hi @Marina! Long time no see!

@Dansedescygnes – I graduated from a school that I like to call John Hughes High. I was actually closer friends with a lot of people from the class ahead of me, as I came to that school in my junior year, and my classmates weren’t as friendly to me as the seniors or sophomores. My class had about 350, the ceremony itself was quick and the popular kids and their parents threw a gigantic party at the National Guard auditorium nearby that lasted into the afternoon and on through til about 2AM. I didn’t attend.

There was a skip day, a Six Flags day, and a “senior slave” day to raise money. Underclassmen would pledge a certain amount of money to a charity picked by the school, and the senior of their choice would carry their books all day and buy lunch and take their notes and all that. Not surprisingly, some seniors opted not to participate! I’m sure that at this point the tradition has fallen by the wayside. I would hope.

An acquaintance who graduated the year before me threw a shindig for his younger brother, and I went to that.

One of my classmates wasn’t allowed to attend the ceremony because he was in the village lockup. He’d broken into the school one Sunday evening, duct taped every cranny that could seep and then filled the administrative office with water from a hose. When the principal opened up the next morning, he got drenched, for one thing, and most of the office equipment and supplies were totally destroyed. The kid’s name wasn’t even called during the ceremony.

I was glad to leave the school because it meant that soon enough, I was leaving “home,” and that overshadowed everything else in my life at the time.

Cue up Vitamin C- graduation song, drink a few beers and get laid, cause there’s college, then it’s completely downhill from this point in your life my man, live it up.

I don’t know. I wasn’t invited.
But congrats to you!!!

There will be no summer in your life like this one, though. Nope! Some will be better than this one, but I fondly remember my summer after I graduated. I felt so FREE!

I hope you enjoy it! And congratulations on graduating!

Congratulations and enjoy everything you can about it, take more pictures than you think you should ever want to see. Give quotes or poems or words of valued friendship around, time passes quicker than you think and you’ll really enjoy to have some mementos for the future to share with friends later.

My own graduation was bittersweet. Our high school was closed down in my Jr. year so our class was split all around our school district. One concession was to let those of us from the closed down school graduate wearing our old school colors even though most of us would have loved to have our own ceremony. It was especially hard for those of us who had been on sport teams together, year after year since Jr. high to know we’d all be going our own ways.

@evolverevolve

I beg to differ. I think it’s only going to be uphill from here. And that’s coming from someone who actually enjoyed high school. And I don’t “drink beer and get laid”. I’m a gay guy…we’re too sophisticated for that… ;P

@hungryhungryhortence

I plan on taking many pictures and keeping many mementos. :)

Congratulations, and I hope your graduation will be both meaningful and memorable.

Mine wasn’t, but then we moved my senior year to a school where folks had no problem in pointing out how one’s differences made one inferior and where everything was all about football. I really didn’t want to go to my graduation, but as the oldest child I owed it to my parents as they viewed it as a milestone for themselves, too.

There were about 500 of us graduating, and everybody had to wear rented red robes that turned out not to be colorfast. Since graduation was in Houston in the summer out in the middle of a football stadium, needless to say, due to sweat and rain, no one escaped being dyed pink.

I assume that most of my classmates went on to parties afterwards, but I don’t know because my friends were the pocket-protector gang and they all wanted to get home so they could go back to building computers, speaking Russian, and playing chess by mail. I went home and went to my room where I continued working on a painting.

My graduation day was hectic. I was late. I cried while I was driving there because..well I don’t remember why. I had to sing with the chorus..Couldn’t find them lol. It was a good day though. I was happy to away from those people :) I don’t really fit in with most people my age. Also, I didn’t actually get a hold of my diploma until a year after geez

that senior sleepover thing sounds so awesome, i wish my school would go for that! congratulations on graduating; i’ve still got a year to go. i’m interested in everyone’s responses. i’m so sad to see the seniors at my school leave; i never really realized how much i appreciated them being there until they left last week and now all that’s left is underclassmen. ):

I was SO ready to be out of high school by the time I graduated. I had always hung out with older people, and high school was just too immature for me. My class was approximately 150 people, most of whom had been together since 5th, 6th or 7th grade. I came in 6th grade, and I had my own group of friends, but didn’t like the majority of the rest of the class.

The ceremony itself was strange, for a high school. My high school used to be separate girls and boys schools. The girls school was a finishing school, so instead of graduating, the senior girls had a debutante ball. To continue that tradition, in part anyway, the girls wear wedding dresses (essentially supposed to be debutante gowns), but the boys wear coat and tie. It’s held indoors, and we entered and exited to Pomp and Circumstance. At my graduation, some of the diplomas got mixed up, and people had to switch them around after receiving them, which was silly to watch.

Overall, I was more than elated to have all of that finished.

I was mentally and emotionally done with high school by about my junior year, and I was glad for it to be over. I only bothered with the whole graduation thing because my parents were so into it.

I’ve exchanged emails with a few of the people from my class, but most of them I haven’t seen in nearly 20 years, and I don’t have a problem with that.