Graduation Day Part 2

 

Much like Buffy before me, I’ve decided to split my Graduation episode in two. Also, to bring a stake to school.

 

At time of writing (about three weeks before time of publishing, if you’re interested, which I know you’re not), I have just finished watching my third year JHS students graduate.

I say “my”; I really had very little to do with them. As per the terms of my contract, I changed schools in January and the students have been engaged in furious exam-cramming since February so, all told, I had around three lessons with them. I gave five of them interview practice and of course I’d see them on my way to school and they’d give me grief over my new haircut but apart from that, we never really crossed paths.

Maybe that was why I found Graduation something of a slog. In England, the vast majority of secondary schools are not split into Middle and Senior– you stay at the same institution from 11 to 16, and then, if you want, attend a Sixth Form college (most of which are attached to secondary schools anyway). I think we might have had some kind of year-wide assembly at the end, but I also think I might have skipped it. We certainly didn’t call it a “graduation”– that sounds very grand to me. Much too grand for a ceremony that only tells you that you’re officially too old for the school to care about you anymore.

Because, in Britain, like in Japan, but, crucially, unlike the USA, you can’t be held back a year. If you survive to the end of your school year, you automatically go on to the next one. I’m not saying that’s a superior system, nor that it’s a worse one, it’s just how things work. But it does mean that moving on to the next year holds no significance or air of accomplishment. You just aged sufficiently.

There were several people crying during Graduation– some parents, some teachers and a lot of the students. One of whom had been chosen to go up and give a speech and who, with the best will in the world, should not have been chosen for that task if she was going to blubber all the way through it and thus take twice as long as necessary.

Frankly, I found it ridiculous that people were crying, especially the adults. By the time I was fifteen, I hadn’t even quite realised that I hated everyone yet, let alone become half of the shining beacon of maturity that I am today. There is nothing special about secondary school or the completion thereof; hell, you’re not even moving anywhere. If you want to keep in contact with the people from your class, it is entirely within your power. If you don’t, it’s because they’re not really that important to you. Dry your eyes, it’s just not sad.

Two years after I left secondary school, I’d started to forget most of my contemporaries, to the point that I met one in a pub and had been talking to her for half an hour before I realised that we’d sat next to each other twice a week for five years. Now, eight years later, the only names I remember are the guy who hacked the computer system, the girl who stuck a thermometer in a Bunsen burner and showered us all in mercury and the guy who now works in the supermarket that my parents frequent. So, kids, best get to distinguishing yourself like that otherwise you’ll be relegated to the “Acquaintances” section on Facebook and they don’t even get to see my life events.

Of course, it’s easy to be cynical. It’s also fun. I heartily endorse it. But I’m sure those who were crying were doing so honestly and I shouldn’t belittle their emotions (he wrote, having just spent a page belittling them). I guess I’d find it easier to care if I felt it mattered in any way, but it’s probably not as easy to see the staggering unimportance of something in which you’re intimately involved. This still, to me, doesn’t explain why the adults were weeping– they should know that in about six months these kids will be blanking each other on the street intentionally and in two years it will be unintentional. I guess maybe the teachers will miss the students (“Why?” my heart of stone cries, “They’ll get new ones next term! And Sturgeon’s law says they’ll be largely identical!”) and the parents are proud of their kids or whatever (“Why? They haven’t done anything except grow older!”) but I thought Japan was meant to be the land of stiff upper lip and public dignity, not smearing your mascara and glubbing through your lines. It’s just graduation, not a bloody Pixar film.

Rory Kelly