Graduation

‘Tis the season—no, not the holidays; graduations. ‘Tis the season. Caps and gowns, smiles, and tears, accomplishments and failures—not everyone makes it. For this entire school year I’ve worked at a school of kids who weren’t supposed to make it. Failures, misfits, oddballs, gangsters, thieves, pregnant teens, addicts, but in the end, as I’ve learned in my years of working with the youth, they’re just kids, like people are just people, all of us simply expressing our joys and frustrations in different ways.

Over the course of the last three days I’ve been to two graduation ceremonies. I do not particularly enjoy graduation ceremonies, or commencements if that’s what you’d wish to call them. Commencement? Into what, life? Oh dear, if you’re 18 and you haven’t been living, then what exactly have you been doing? Adulthood? I met 8 year olds in Malawi that were young men, and I’ve met 40 year olds here that have yet to leave the third grade. A new beginning? I suppose, but isn’t it strangely paradoxical that this new beginning is celebrated by such an overdone ceremony?

My graduation, now ten years ago, was awesome, stellar, rowdy, off-tha-chain, insane. Paper planes flew, only to get knocked out of flight by the 40 or so beach balls that grads had taped under chairs the day before, or that parents had brought to have some fun. Fun, fun, fun, that’s what my graduation was! The big bad principal got up on her big loud microphone, and yelled out big bad orders…but we all laughed, hooted and hollered, until she cowered and got off the stage. Assholes? Yes, we were. We were high school kids on graduation day, and we were assholes. But we were happy, and as we walked off the stage with our diplomas in hand, we descended into a massive sea of 500 assholes unwilling to follow the rules and stay seated, opting instead to give us hugs and high-fives, compliments and congratulations. That was a great night, and even my passing out on a friend’s front lawn can’t take away from that. Perhaps it only adds to it.

My graduation, however, was the great exception and so when I found out that the school I’ve been teaching at this year was having its ceremony at the same time as game 1 of the NBA finals, I was less than pleased. I know, it’s shallow and wrong, but hey, what can I say, it’s me. And it’s graduations too. Let’s face it; they’re boring, trite, and cliché… “We did it! We made it! Change the world!!!” “Welcome, welcome, welcome…welcome each and everyone.” I’ve been to dozens of commencements, and they’re all the same, but God likes laughing at me, and so as it turned out, this one was different.

“Robert Talisman,” announced the head counselor, and everyone clapped. “Maria Jimenez,” and Maria’s crazy brothers got up and shouted out with joy. This wasn’t different, in fact, this is the most uniform part of all graduations. The principal or head counselor reads out the names of students, they go up, shake hands, take a diploma, people clap, they throw up both arms, and then go back and sit down. But THESE names were different, these names were special. Most people out of California look puzzled when I say “continuation high school.” “What’s that? Like for adults? Oh, like an honors program?” “No. For like kids who get kicked out or drop out of their other high schools.” “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Like Dangerous Minds or Freedom Writers.” “Yeah, kind of.”

One-by-one these names, accompanied by heads and bodies, which I’d taught for a year, came strutting off the stage facing the faculty; we, the faculty, went nuts. “Oh my gosh, KEITH!!! HEATHER!!! WAY TO GO ROBERT! SO PROUD OF YOU MARIA! And JACKIE, LOOK AT YOU, YOU’RE SO BEAUTIFUL!” They broke the line and gave us hugs, they beamed, they cried, they posed, they danced, they jumped. You don’t get it because you don’t know Keith, Heather, Robert, Maria, or Jackie, but if you did, you’d cry. Because Jackie’s got two kids and she made it through; Keith is the first in his family to graduate high school; Robert was homeless for a year and somehow he’s starting college in the fall; Maria was hooked on Meth until she came to our school; and Heather? Well she was just lost, without direction or guidance or anyone who cared in her life.

By the time the 300th student was grabbing his diploma, the quad had reached a fever pitch, with Pomp and Circumstance blaring out of the speakers, horns blowing, mothers shouting, and siblings clapping up a storm, but even with all the ruckus, everyone was contained, calm and respectful. There was a genuine joy in the air, of people truly proud of loved ones, of people watching loved ones accomplish seemingly impossible tasks, and that was something I’d never really seen before at a graduation ceremony. Two days later I found myself in the monstrously large Los Angeles Cathedral watching the senior class, whom I’d taught as freshman at a Catholic high school four years prior, walk solemnly in front of the altar to grab their diplomas. There was no music, there was no applause permitted (though some brave souls, destined for hell no doubt, did break this rule), and there was certainly no dancing or horn blowing; there was only order and form. It was not fun.

“There is the known, and there is the unknown, and in between are the doors.”—Jim Morrison

Tassels fly high up in the sky, and magically drift down weightlessly, wrapping around the contours of rear view mirrors of cars on the move. Life goes on. I remember graduating high school and thinking, “I just made it through all of that shit, what else could life possibly throw at me? I made it!” The real question is, “Where did I make it to?” “Another door,” is the only suitable answer. Somehow I had it in my mind that after high school came a break, a long break, pretty much for the rest of my life. Having conquered sex, drugs, gangs, depression, manic-depressive parents, and anything else that life could come up with, I felt like nothing else could touch me…but life isn’t a race, it’s a marathon, and we really don’t have a choice but to run it and hope that the training paid off, that our pacing is good, and that there are going to be people with water and Gatorade waiting for us around every turn.

Commencement? It’s just a continuation, and it doesn’t matter where you came from, what money your family had or didn’t have, how great your struggle was to get through high school—the fact is that my “troubled” kids are walking out into the same world that my “private school” kids are walking out into, and the questions that they are going to face are going to be the same, because they’re the same questions that have been facing man for eternity. Who am I? What do I want? What is love? What is God? What is the meaning of it all? Doors, doors, doors, a lifetime spent on the threshold. Pass bravely and with all of God's grace.