Off the I-15

When the final diploma changed hands at Barstow High School’s graduation ceremony, it marked the end of Graduation Season 2007 in the Desert Dispatch newsroom. For the past few weeks, we Desert Dispatch reporters have shared many a special nights with graduates and their families, prodding them for quotes, asking them what comes next and probably getting in the way a bit to get that perfect shot.

Unfortunately, we haven’t been invited to many graduation parties. It’s OK though. There’s always next year’s season.

And we’ve heard a lot of graduation speeches. Looking back on the speeches we’ve heard, the ceremonies we’ve covered, the photos and articles published, it is easy to assume that the graduation story is a cliché story. But it’s not. Because for each one of those graduates we covered, that story, that night, that graduation, was the coolest thing.

Before BHS’s graduation on Thursday, I talked to one graduate, Brittania, who told me that her day thus far had actually been pretty bad. My own sister, I said to her, scored the winning goal in a regional playoff soccer game right before her high school graduation. It was for the other team. But Betsy didn’t let the season ending own goal spoil her night. She smiled and cried through the ceremony like every other graduate. And even as Brittania walked away from me, she turned around and said, “But it’s still exciting.”

Graduating is cool. It’s exciting. And no matter how many Dr. Seuss, Mark Twain, Robert Kennedy or Robert Frost quotes we hear, it is never cliché. (Sorry BHS grad-speakers, I’m not picking on you, you all are just fresh in my mind.) For each graduate, their graduation night is marked by those speeches and will be forever remember by them.

So as I drove back to the office after the BHS graduation, trying to organize all the parts of the story before I hit my desk, fingers run, I had to pause for a moment. The radio played Good Riddance, by Green Day, my class’, the Forest Hills Northern Class of 2002’s, graduation song.

Yeah, it’s cliché.

– Aaron Aupperlee, staff writer