How big a deal is high school commencement?

I'm in this camp. If it's going to be the greatest accomplishment of their lives - as in, they will never have a college education and it was a question they'd get the HS walk at all, I'm fine with making a bigger deal of it. If the graduate obviously has bigger things on the horizon, then it's more of a regular, run-of-the-mill deal. Our goddaughter is graduating HS this week, and she's already been accepted to an Ivy League school. I think the HS graduation for her is more of a nuisance than anything else. She didn't even send out graduation announcements.

I would only attend physically if it was a member of my immediate family. Will widen the circle a bit to give small graduation gifts.

 

We had a graduating class of 500 in 1987, and we had it in the gym.
The football field was new, and Father Rock didn't want it getting ruined.
Each kid got two tickets for the commencement. Never seemed like a big deal to me or my family. Those were just the circumstances: big graduating class in a small gym.

 

If your parents and grandparents went to college and you go to a public high school, its no big deal.
If you're white, middle class or better and your parents went to college and you go to a public high school, its no big deal.

Graduating from a prep/private school is a big deal but people don't go nuts.

Its weird how you hangout all through high school with the same friends and comes graduation and your friends who are black show up with the kinte cloth talis around their necks.

I was like, when did you become Malcom XI?

 

I don't even remember my high school graduation ceremony.

And no, that's not why.

 

It's a big deal.

My HS class of 299 people had its ceremony in the football stadium, capacity 2,500 (stage was set up to face only one side of the 4,000-seat stadium).

The stands weren't jam packed but I would say better than half full.

 

I still remember my high school graduation from 24 years ago, mainly because in those non-breathable gowns it was hotter than 40 hells in that gym the way they had people packed in there. My folks, aunts, uncles, grandmothers (both grandfathers were dead by then) were there ... no different than the rest of the class. By comparison, I didn't even walk when I got my BA from college. I didn't give a shit. I said "mail it to me." But, when I graduate with my masters later this year, I'll dang sure walk.

 

I didn't want to go at all, but my parents insisted.
I was super high and dozed off udring the ceremony. Of course, we had no air conditioning and it was hot as heck in that gym.
The girl next to me had to nudge me when they called my name.

 

My college graduation was in Cole Field House, I was the third from last to enter. We graduated in order of GPA.

Imagine walking onto the floor of Cole, the stands packed and everyone was cheering, the floor was packed and the last refrain of Pomp and Circumstance has just begun, I felt like I actually accomplished something, got laid.

 

So if you have kids, you'll skip his/her graduation?

 

It's a big deal for some. This is the group of peers you grew up with (for better or worse). College graduation just isn't the same deal, you end up sitting next to someone you don't know at all, meet the college president or dean for the first time when you no longer have a use for knowing them and maybe you have some close friends graduating with you, maybe not, but the class ties just aren't there. I graduated HS with people I went to pre-school with, got in trouble with later on, first got drunk with, and who still am tight to to this day.
For some HS is a big struggle and it really does mean something to them - from there on out it is all about the choices that lie ahead. More school, a job etc.
You notice it at the HS reunions. People you haven't said boo to in years come up like graduation was yesterday.

 

I loved it because family members who didn't want to bother coming to the ceremony eased their guilt by padding those cash cards. Worked for me. I hauled a little more than $500. It was May 20, 1999. Many Gungans died that day.

 

A speech like this would have made my graduation more memorable: