Commencement Personal Reflection

I was interesting to go back and write a commencement speech for the eighth grade 3 years after I gave one as an eighth grader. It's baffling to see how much has changed. I reread what I had written and the aspects of my life that I held above all other then are almost unrecognizable from what's important to me today. I really liked the nonspecificity of the prompt. It was freeing to spend just a little bit of time rambling about advice I would formally give to my younger peers. I think that we often have advice, just never a good venue in which to share it. Humans are almost obsessed with sharing our experiences and trying to influence others before they make the same mistakes as us. It's the reason we teach history to our children. At the same time I realized how much of a distaste I have for formal speeches, they always seem to fall flat to me. Even those that are passed around the internet. But oh well... A very self-reflective project overall.