#reluctant-zero

I'm just going to answer the first ten? :D

1. Been drunk?HA YES. With Anna and it was great omf

2. Kissed someone? Yes but only one person and I pretty recently had my first kiss actually?

3. Broken up wit someone?Yes but it was all okay cause she felt the same way

4. Had sex?Heh nope

5. Had a threesome?Nooope.

6. Cried yourself to sleep?Unfortunately, more than I should have.

7. Self-harmed?Yes but I REGRET IT DON'T DO IT EVER

8. Been in love?I don't really know.

9. Cheated?Nope.

                We ask because we think we know the answer: never. When we look back in 30 years, we’re most likely not going to remember the plot of Ethan Frome, or what happened in Act 2 of Othello. We may not recall the names of the Supreme Court cases that clarified the First Amendment, or who represented Austria at the Congress of Vienna, or why the Congress of Vienna was held to begin with. And in 30 years, I need to graph a function, I’ll use a computer.

                And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. I believe education isn’t about the accumulation of knowledge. We aren’t here today, about to graduate, because we’ve learned everything Brentsville has to offer. We’re here, hopefully, because we’ve gained enough experience to prepare us to move on. When we walk across this stage, we walk into a new phase of life, and the further we go, the less important it becomes that we remember the exact content of our high school classes. But that doesn’t mean these last 4 years were a waste of our time.

The important lessons were all there, but they ran deeper. In the real world, you may never have to solve an equation for X. But every day, you will face problems with many variables, and many steps, and you will need to solve them based on the principles you’ve learned. Your future success may not depend on an in-depth knowledge of symbolism in the Great Gatsby, but it might depend on your ability to think critically, and apply the concepts found in fiction to a better understanding of life. One of the reasons we dismiss these hidden lessons is that we believe we know where we’re going in life. We plan our classes and extracurricular activities accordingly. Why worry about English when you want to be a doctor? Why join robotics club, unless you want to be a programmer or an engineer? Why take music classes, or foreign language, or play sports?

The truth is that we don’t know where the future will take us, and the greater truth is that every opportunity we’re presented with at school is connected. To deny the importance of any of them is to deny them all. On some level, everything we’ve been taught in high school is significant because it helps us understand our universe and the people that inhabit it.

What matters, at the end of the day, is that we learn how to make and achieve our goals, and how to have meaningful relationships with the people around us. For education to give us that, we need to couple it with varied experiences that tie everything together. Life experience isn’t just about age; quality has as much to do with quantity. With a broader range of experience comes a greater foundation on which to build connections, in our minds and with the people around us. It’s what allows us to see more deeply into these lessons in the classroom, and relate to them more personally.  Here, depth and breadth are the same; to see the world from many different perspectives is to understand it more deeply.

There’s a lot of pressure on us to specialize. We’re expected to know what we want, and focus on it almost exclusively. Part of that is a necessary function of the college and work application process. In order to compete, we need the highest grades, or the best athletic skills. Now that the process is over, I want to challenge you to expand your horizons. Do something you wouldn’t expect from yourself in college. Take film studies classes even though you’re majoring in business. Draw, whether you consider yourself an artist or not. Go to concerts for bands you’ve never heard of. Discover your hidden talent for the piano, and your unknown passion for lacrosse. And all along the way, go places you’ve never been with people you didn’t expect to like. You’ll find yourselves connected to them in ways you could never imagine. In the words of JRR Tolkien:

The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began, Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.