A message for the Class of 2025
An elder millennial's words of wisdom, or possibly warning
Hello, Iowans of the Class of 2025. You seniors are leading off the second quarter of the 21st century and need a speech from someone big to match that status. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with me, the third male lead in a 1999 production of “Bye Bye Birdie.”
Really, though, what better person to give students advice for the last year of high school than someone whose life peaked during it? One day you, too, will be ineligible for a 30 Under 30 list, or 40 Under 40, and realize that 7 Over 70 is probably too aspirational.
As I look at the approximately 41,000 of you in our state, I can be sure of this: I have many, many digital files that are older than you. It’s a bit disconcerting to find that the turn of the century is now historical enough — or at least marketable enough — for an American Girl doll. It’s more disconcerting to mutter to myself that I’m too young to be having a midlife crisis.
That’s not to say you and I don’t have things in common. We both have been listening to Taylor Swift for a while, although she swears now and it’s unsettling. I, like many of you, will never be able to afford a house.
Much of what I thought about telling you became irrelevant in the decade following my graduation in 2000. You have a phone number and e-mail address to take with you. Social media is killing high school reunions because there’s no need to “catch up” with classmates — unless you opt out of it, in which case you pretty much don’t exist.
With that in mind, here are some pieces of senior-year advice I hope are as timeless as a good prom dress and wear better than your holey jeans.
Take pictures, and I don’t mean selfies. There are people who take half a dozen photos before breakfast or half a dozen photos OF breakfast. Take good pictures, of classmates and teachers and moments and silly things and the school building itself, and curate them. It’ll save time later.
Write stuff down. Not in texts or Snapchat or who-knows-what. Keep a diary/journal with dated entries in a place that you’ll be able to view it later with reasonable ease, whether that’s handwritten or on computer. The Notes app is … ugh, probably fine, I guess.
If there’s an activity you have the slightest interest in, do it. This especially goes for the small-school kids. There will never be another opportunity to have so many opportunities at your fingertips.
To the athletes: With very few exceptions, it will end with a loss. Take a moment occasionally and at that end to appreciate the times that it didn’t. I’m not saying you have to be happy when coach is making you run ladders or killers, but there will be a time when you wish you still could.
To the theater kids: Write your names on the wall (you know the one) or the stage closet, and let the freshmen know where to do the same. To the speech team coaches and play directors who get wind of this: You can’t prove anything.
To the students who have yet to take their last English literature class: Holden Caulfield deserves everything coming to him.
To the band and chorus kids: Keep it up. The concerts and performances this year will be ones you really remember. Try not to let graduation be the last time you’re able to share the gift of music. Finding a place I could do it a dozen years after I stopped was a blessing. Be prepared to hear a song years from now and still break out into harmony.
To my people, the Type A students: Be aware of something I call “reverse senioritis.” You can get caught up in knowing that something or other is the last time you’ll do it. Instead of slacking off, you’ll be on a mission. I’d like to advise you to chill just a bit, but I certainly didn’t, and neither high school me nor you would listen anyway. There WILL be a yearbook and we’re the ones who will spend the week after graduation or Memorial Day putting the finishing touches on it.
Oh, and your first non-A grade in college is really going to hurt.
One day you, the students of the Class of 2025, will be out there doing big things. Right now, it’s time to be the seniors who rule the school, but also, be teenagers, in a good way.
You’re all in this together, but you’re also all in this separately. None of us can know everything that everyone else is going through, not even your closest friends. Share as much as you feel able, and take what support they give to heart, but there will be things you have to work out for yourself.
You’ve probably heard or will hear that your life is not set, and that at some point you won’t be the same person that you were in high school. This is … how should I say it … a statement of varying veracity. You might, you might not, or you might find parts of yourself that were always there breaking containment.
You have nine months to go. Make them count. Make for yourself a year that, when it ends with the chorus singing “Seasons of Love” or “For Good” in the gym or auditorium, it’s meaningful enough that you remember that feeling 25 years later.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been informed that the junior class was born after the iPhone was released and I need to re-evaluate my entire concept of time.
My other work can be found on my website, Iowa Highway Ends, and its blog.
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