Expecting Graduation

Graduation is an obvious time for celebration, for it is a time when we all pause to acknowledge the desire and the sacrifice of graduates, graduates who have worked diligently to achieve their goals.

Graduation is a time to reflect on the past and to applaud the present. But graduation is also a time to anticipate the future, for graduation is simply a formal recognition of a rite of passage from one condition to another.

The Latin root of graduation is gradus, which means "step." And so graduates step across their respective stages, accept their respective diplomas, and stride off into brave new worlds.

Graduation implies transition, graduation suggests progress, but graduation itself is fleeting; for it is what occurs after graduation that ultimately defines graduates.

Just as graduates are judged worthy of graduating based on their past performance, so too do we expect great things from them in their futures. We expect graduates to continue to work hard, to continue to succeed, to continue to graduate.

We invest graduates with the hopes and dreams of not only their futures but also with our futures. We hope that their futures will be our futures, that their progress will continue to echo, to mirror, to inform our own progress.

Which is why we should not be satisfied when our graduates graduate. And why graduates should not be satisfied with graduation.

Graduation is a fitting close to one chapter of life, but graduation is also a beginning: graduates graduate from something, but they also graduate to something.

Some graduates graduate from 8th grade and step into high school. Some graduates graduate from high school and step into the military or college or a job. Some graduates graduate from the military or from college or from a job and step into civilian life or graduate school or another job or being a parent.

And so goes life, one step at a time, one graduation at a time, one graduate at a time.

Graduations celebrate a fleeting moment between accomplishments and expectations, between what had been done and what has yet to be done, between the past and the future.

And while life is composed of many such moments - when individuals are poised on the cusp of two worlds, the after and the before - the difference for graduates is that their steps toward the future are intentional: they have consciously completed a certain proscribed course of study, they have deliberately achieved a certain set of expectations.

In a world that can seem random and seems to increase in complexity as our lives are lived, graduates assert some measure of mastery over a particular skill set, some sense of control over their futures based on their past achievements.

And so we applaud the achievements of our graduates at the same time we envy their confidence in their futures.

It is this that we celebrate during graduation: the courage of graduates to believe that they possess a certain authority over their lives. That the self-discipline they demonstrated by graduating will translate to a future into which they can step confidently.

--Steve McKibben
6/15/07