Words of Wisdom to the SHS Class of 2014

Background:

Every year from 2003–2011, I contributed my “Words of Wisdom” to the “Staff Advice” portion of the Senior issue of the Stevenson Spotlight (Having looked them over, my class of 2007 words, influenced heavily by the Virginia Tech mass shooting, is still my best work, which makes sense when I think about it.)

Then, like many newspapers, The Spotlight died in 2012. But I still wished the Seniors who friended me on Facebook good luck. So here’s my Words of Wisdom for the Class of 2014. This is longer than usual, but recent events compelled me…

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My sincere congratulations and a fond farewell to the Class of 2014. My standard disclaimer to begin: Be careful. Be safe. Be smart. And remember; only you can prevent forest fires.

This entire section of my words of wisdom owes its existence to my dear friend Catherine Haremski.

Without getting too deep into the past, Catherine taught me the difference between friends of convenience and friends of choice. Your high school life, whether you realize it or not, is filled with friends of convenience. You see these people every day and you’re friends with them because you have something in common. Now this does not mean that you cannot form long term and lasting friendships from friends of convenience, but in the near future, you’re going to be faced with some choices.

But you need your friends of choice. You need people in your life who know your back story, who know where you’re coming from, who know what you want to do. But more than that, you need people you can laugh with, who you can cry with, who will back you, even when you’re wrong, but most importantly, will call you out when you’re wrong and will stop you from doing the truly, disastrously stupid things. But you also need to give that back in return. It’s a feedback loop and you get what you give. You’re going need to hold on to the people who do this for you, because you need those people tomorrow, and the next day, and all of those days beyond. I’m lucky. I have many friends that I have made in many walks of life, from blogs, from college, from quiz bowl, from work, from different eras, different places in my life. And yet, if you asked me who I know I can count on, so many of those names at the top of that list, I know that so many of them will be some of my favorite 96ers. I may not have seen some of them in years, but that doesn’t matter, because we have worked hard to bridge the gaps in physical distance for the simple reason that these are the people with whom we have chosen to share our lives.

But that choosing is a two-way street as well. Some people are going to move on without you, and that’s OK, because that is the way life works. You’ll miss them, but the memories remain. Memories are weird things, because it’s not the things you’re sure you’re going to remember that you actually end up remembering, it’s the random moments that you have no idea why you remember them that flash up in your head. Some will make you smile, others will make you wince, but you’ll make choices too, and some of the people from whom you have moved on will have the same moments in their life. Progress is about moving forward, not at the expense of the past, but to secure yourself a brighter future.

Which brings me to another point: Social media will give you the illusion of keeping close to people because you’ll see them in your timelines and feeds. That’s great. But unless you work to fan the flames, those people can become ghosts, echoes, holograms; they will be present but ephemeral. So do not feel bad if you’re not as connected to those people as you are today, you’re more connected to your past than any group of people ever has been before.

In the end, life comes down to a lot of little things people have been trying to teach you from your first days in this world: be nice, be kind, be polite, be thoughtful, be respectful, be genuine, be sincere, and most importantly, be a good friend. If you can do that, so many other things will take care of themselves.

Good luck and godspeed Class of 2014.