The Graduation Speech

Tonight was the COMMittment dinner, the dinner celebrating my four years of undergraduate studies nearly coming to an end. In fact, as of next week, I will have finished my last classes of education for a very long time. This is it.

"I've been here before," I kept thinking to myself as I listened to the speeches recognizing our most beloved professors and those students who have contributed the most to our Class. I've sat through the same doses of inspiration, those same anecdotes from Dr.Seuss' "oh, the places we'll go" and those same pangs of nostalgia came back again.

Professor McConomy said, quite correctly, that this wasn't the end. It wasn't even the beginning of the end. No, it was the end of the beginning - and he was right. The starting gun has been fired, and we're off to the races! Life is awaiting! Seize it! But somehow i feel as though i'm not done training....not by a long shot. I feel premature, and unprepared.

As I listened to the amazing accomplishments and achievements of my fellow students, I began to search myself for those same hints of greatness...and i found myself lacking. I feel like a fool and a fraud, knowing that I'll never live up to anything but pretending that I have that potential anyways.

What have i done with these four years? Really? I've just spent a lot of them locked up in my room, studying, sleeping, watching tv, writing, dreaming, talking, praying, thinking, and not much doing. Each time i had the opportunity to make a difference, to actually take the initiative and do something that no one else had done before - i falked. Like the little train who could, I sputtered and stalled...the question is, can i make it up the hill? Am i even meant to? Maybe i'm just a fish, fooled into thinking he can fly.

But here's the thing: all these things may be true, but so what? Other people have had it worse, and they've overcome. Perhaps my purpose in life is to be Sisyphus. Cursed with the having to push a gigantic boulder up a hill each day, only to have it roll down and render his toil meaningless....Sisyphus still does it. Everyday, he rolls that boulder up the hill even though he knows it's going to come back down. He keeps going because the alternative, not trying, is even worse.