All across the United Stated students are graduating from High School and Colleges. Do you have fond memories of the night you graduated? If you are like me, I had mixed emotions about leaving high schooling 1964. I was not pleased to realize most of my fellow students were strangers to me. Even though I had received passing grades, I had failed on social skills. I was aware of the other 90 graduated; I knew them all by their first name. Some were great athletes, others were book worms that usually aced every test they took, but other than those small bits and pieces about their likes and dislikes, they were strangers to me. How was it possible that most of our paths had never crossed? Then suddenly I realized that the majority of us had never shared a homeroom together or had a single class together in high school. We only passed each other in the hallways.
A few years ago, we celebrated out fifteenth High school reunion. Some of the most popular graduated had excuses why they couldn’t attend. It was shocking to me that a few students claimed that high school had been a bad experience for them and they had moved on to bigger and better things. I was surprised that those students seemed to have better grades and more admirable social skills than most of us, and maybe the rest of us weren’t so inept after all. As I walked away, with diploma in hand and a tearing my eye, my heart longed to have a more “personal relationship” with my classmates than passing them at recess in the hallways of Swainsboro High School. But the window opportunity had now closed; there would be no second chances. Hindsight is 20/20. By not venturing from our little personal clicks or groups in high school we lost out on students that were unique and diversified on their approach to life.