By Sadie Barend
Welcome back to the latest edition of Life After North! High school graduation season is in full swing, and that means one thing: family arguments.
Graduation is a time to celebrate four years of learning how to use ChatGPT, but often this achievement is overshadowed by high emotions, such as your mom destroying a box of Kleenex.
To avoid chaos, I have curated a survival guide for all high school graduations, made for students and parents. I cannot guarantee these tips will work, but it’s better than nothing.
Navigating Graduation: Tips for high school seniors
- Let your family members take all the pictures they want.
- Now, immediately acquire a backup photographer. Otherwise, your mom’s thumb will certainly make an appearance in the corner of each graduation photo.
- When throwing your cap, beware of the people around you. In other words, try not to hit the front row of the audience where all the teachers are sitting. Speaking from experience, if you accidentally nail your world history teacher, he won’t be too thrilled.
- Now is not the time to tell your parents that you never completed the community service requirement. They’ll find out when you never receive a diploma in the mail.
Navigating Graduation: Tips for family members and guests
- Please leave behind any device that is noisy and brings unnecessary attention to your graduate. Yes, that includes the airhorn—especially the airhorn.
- Withhold commenting on the off-key rendition of “See You Again.” Everyone knows the original was better, but let the theatre kids have their moment.
- Restrain yourself from bragging about your graduate to the people sitting next to you. There’s a strong chance they already saw your Facebook post congratulating Jimmy on making the honor roll. If not, your “Dad of the Grad” shirt probably did the trick.
- Graduation speeches are notoriously long, so pack the essentials. I’m talking a squirt gun for whenever you doze off, several Fiber One bars, and a pair of binoculars to see your kid walk across the stage.
That is it for my advice on how to navigate high school graduation. Even if you did not find my tips helpful, consider sending this article to your family members and friends for a quick laugh. Or not, that’s fine too.
Congrats to the Class of 2025! I’ll see you next month!