Grade 12: Bitter Freedom

 
            It looms in the impending darkness. A thought so polluted with expectations that it is hidden in closets below skeletons. The word itself makes thousands of grade twelve students everywhere shudder: Graduation. Their final day of certainty is commemorated with a ceremony and a diploma, at last releasing the students into the unknown. An “arrangement in degrees, levels, or ranks,” seemingly defies the goal of equality which echoes throughout society, but is the very definition of graduation. The newly crowned “Grads” envelop themselves in the laborious preparation, but how can one prepare for the unfamiliar and unexpected? For seventeen years these adolescents have had their lives planned out, their future set. School became simply a mandatory routine. However, after their final ten months of high school dissolve into the past, there is no longer a required path for them to follow. School has taught these graduates many things, but has it taught them how to live? University professors are not accommodating to a lack of preparedness with test re-writes and study sessions. Using the Pythagorean Theorem will not help pay rent. The timeline of World War 2 will be of no benefit during a pharmaceutical job interview. School teaches one how to be a student. Once these routine stricken young adults are released from the safety pen that is high school, the future is solely up to them.