E-Prep's Graduation Speech: The Pact

Ever since I was a little kid, and growing up in the grade school, I saw the students a grade above me as the “big kids.” I would look up to them and try to be just like them. I can remember being in the fifth grade and wishing I was a sixth grader because they were older than me and they had, what felt like, more authority over everyone in the grade school. Last year, during my junior year in high school, I was still looking up to them. Of course, they were all some of my very good friends, but I still felt like they had more authority over me. When they graduated, I felt different. It took until about halfway through the first nine-weeks to realize I have authority over every student in the school, and there were

As teenagers in high school are in their final year of school, a sinking feeling sets in that you have to make a decision about what the next steps in your life are. For myself, I chose to take the less expensive route and stay closer to home. But most of my closest confidants respectfully chose routes they saw fit for themselves. This would end up meaning that I would not be five lockers down from people that I have been friends with for six plus years, which was a hard realization to come to. By the start of college, I would have friends at MSU, Grand Valley, CMU, California, Florida and England. With friendships being a huge priority to me this was not an easy thing to go through at the time. Knowing that the people I spent every day with

Friends are a big part of your high school life as these are the people you will grow

There are all these factors that define you in high school and possibly even college such as who you fit in with, what gender you are around more, what your beliefs are, and where you're from or what places you’ve been to. For me, I have always fit in with a compact group of people that accepted me and were much like me in sense of beliefs. Unfortunately, none of my friends have been in my classes since freshman year, since I have always been proficient at the subjects they weren’t and ended up in honors classes. I feel like the only reason that has happened is because I finally feel comfortable enough and encouraged enough by friends that I now believe there is more judging of quality of work by teachers than factors like gender or sexuality that students judge. Since that belief came along education has shaped me into a much fuller person which is why I’m trying my best to knock out one year or so off college while in high

Junior year was the year that I was elected at Konawaena High School's Student Body Corresponding Secretary and the junior class Vice President. With these two major responsibilities, I found it difficult to balance the duties of an officer, school assignments, and having a job. I found myself prioritizing my roles as an officer over my school work, which you can only imagine did not work out so well. Throughout the school year I realized that I almost became a zealot about student activities, and this is where things in my social life went wrong, or so I thought. Friends of mine since the very beginning starred to become nothing but familiar faces, and soon enough, nothing but memories. I then began looking at the priorities of my "friends" and the priorities that I had for myself. They did not seem to match up. I soon found myself with a new group of people on

The school year approached its end. Another summer to spend alone by myself. The cycle had been repeating since I was in grade school. Sadness choked me as I returned home and shut my door. Every year, the resolution was the same: I would try to make friends next year; however, every year, I felt myself falling back down into the same trap. By the time high school began, I no longer felt the numb sensation of sadness or the flow of tears as the final day of May became the last day I talked with my “friends.” I no longer expected to make any friends, or, more accurately, I no longer expected to be able to make any friends. The sheer possibility of befriending an individual appeared to me as foreign as speaking in latin. When I walked into school, what should have been a site of chatter, opportunity, and growth appeared to me as a form of imprisonment and torture; however, unbeknownst to me, I did have friends; something of which I did not recognize until years passed by. I grown attached to certain conversations; there were times where I felt the need to initiate a conversation rather than waiting for someone else to make one. It was not until one of my friends told me,”We’re your friends aren’t we?” when I realized I was not longer

My sense of belonging at Marquette High has changed drastically throughout my four years here. I spent the majority of my freshman year getting to know as many people as I possibly could and I bounced between several friend groups throughout the year. However, I completely cut off ties with middle school friends and never spoke with them. I believed that Marquette was a new chapter in my life and chose to forget about my time in middle school, but this choice came back to bite me my first summer as a high schooler. I realized that I never invested my time in anyone else, and found myself knowing hundreds of kids without having any real friends. This made my summer extremely sad and boring, and while I wanted to leave, my parents pushed me towards another year at Marquette. I

Like any other school there were the “cool” kids and the “not-so-cool” kids and like most people I longed for the feeling of fitting in. I tried so hard to buy the right clothes and to talk the right way. I became so caught up in my own life that I did not take a second to stop and think of someone other than myself. Last year, in eight grade, I had the chance to be apart of the “it” group, but during that time I lost myself. Peer pressure had pushed me into a corner where I was unable to think for myself and as a result I lost my ability to establish my character.

An important thing you learn about high school is act mature. Nobody likes that immature person or persons. The more mature you are the more respect you will get from teachers, classmates, and upperclassmen. Your mature friend/s are someone you can talk to, your immature friend/s are someone that are there for a laugh. Choose which friend you will benefit from

Senior year has been a great year so far, and I’ve made so many friends. It hard to believe that it’s coming to an end. This is by far the fastest school year for me thats ever gone by. So many things are going on that I have to keep track of. Life choices, figuring out where I want to go for college obviously, applying for jobs, and learning how to drive, have all been consuming a lot of my time. It’s stressful but I know I have to do it and it’s gonna be great for me in the long run. The start of the year I sat with my junior friends at lunch every day. After a while, some of the main people that I usually talk to left the group, so I was with left with only one friend and a bunch of other girls I didn’t know or talk to. My friend eventually

I 'm scared to start over so maybe that 's why I am not going out of my way to make new friends. I tell myself that I should just focus on school, but I know it 's my anxiety telling me that I won’t be accepted. I chose to talk about this experience because this is something i am experiencing now and I knew once i talked about it, I could start making progress to being happy st this school. I don’t really understand why people don’t seem to like but I think it’s just because they don’t know me yet. Ive realized that friends aren 't just going to fall into my lap and I 've already started to sign up for a few clubs so hopefully some good will come from it.

For as long as I can remember I’ve had the same group of friends, but coming into high school I met a lot of new people. I met some of my best friends here and my boyfriend.I’ve reached out to a lot of different people I didn’t really expect to be friends with. I learned that you really can’t judge a book by a cover and that probably sounds cliche, but some of the people I thought I’d never get along with became some of my really good friends.

I had changed friends but I believe it was too late then, I wanted to take everything back from those school ages. At the time, all the way up until graduation I had the same friends. 7 years later I have not one friend from school anymore. It seems that everyone went their separate ways, and I felt at this time a lot of the things I did were stupid and un thought of.

Back in elementary and middle school, I did not know what real friends are until my eighth grade year. Back then I though friends are just people you play with during recess and eat lunch with; however, that all change when I found out what I consider my friends were really treating me like. As I was growing up, I did not have a group people that I can call them my true friend. I would always hop around to different group to try and find the one I feel I would fit in. When I found a group of people I though would work for me I would always be around them during lunch and recess time. They were nice and accepting of me which made me really happy. When I was with them I, they would always pick and bully other classmate. As a result of me wanting to fit in, I also started to pick on the other students and call them means name. They would always do it to different student and would just join

I walked into the loud classroom everyone was talking to each other, but there were quite a lot of new people that I didn’t recognize from Morgan. In Morgan I wasn’t shy, I talked to basically everyone, but once I came to the middle school everything changed. My friends made new friends and stopped talking to me. For the first week, I was very lonely. Eventually, I made some new friends, who are now some of my best friends, and they are Malia, Zoey, and Olivia. I wasn’t best friends with them at the time, but they were just people I would hang out with. Everything school wise came pretty easy to me, I had good grades, but I was still a little shy. My social skills was a huge setback,