發表評論-小樵-萬維博客-萬維讀者網（電腦版）

Thank you for bearing with us for four years! I hope that this chance to take pictures of us dressed in these ridiculous gowns is just compensation for your years of hard work, patience, and sleep deprivation! Truly, we couldn’t have made it without you.

And class of 2014! We’re here! We’ve walked the walk, we’ve talked the AP talk, we’ve been mocked by underclassmen, but look at us, we’ve got Warren Christopher scholars, Presidential scholars, National Merit scholars, student authors, horsemen (and women), students who’ve gone to DC, student’s who’ve worked as emcees, painters who’ve pinned the sky to their canvas, photographers, dancers, atheists, deists, right, left, and everything in between!

We’re off to college.

No more squeezing through mobs of seventh graders in the green building, no more AP tests, no more of this jigsaw schedule that’s driven all of us to the brink of sanity for years.

We’ve succeeded!...

…right?

The hallways and streets only get more crowded from here, the tests more difficult, the schedules more confusing. It seems that every responsibility we take on presses down harder on the accelerator for time. Tennessee Williams wrote that “time is the longest distance between two places”.

Turn around and look; a yard ago you were celebrating your 18^th birthday, your parents were telling you to pray for the future, a kilometer ago you were culminating from eighth grade and wearing a suit and trying to look classy for the first time in your life, a few miles ago you were still small enough for your dad to carry you around on his back. I remember my first cross-country practice; I must’ve spent an eternity desperately chasing the varsity guys and dragging myself up the hills, but now those miles are only a memory, barely remembered.

Earth itself moves far faster than we ever will, and time moves waayy too fast. It becomes easy to get tunnel vision; events blur together into a violent rainbow, and only what’s in front of us is clear.

We won’t find ourselves in that situation. At this last checkpoint into freedom, don’t forget what freedom is. Gandhi noted that “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” Never be afraid to try something new, and never let anyone, including yourself, tell you that there’s a single correct path in life. There are just too many choices in this buffet for us to stay vegetarian, or be carnivorous, I mean, humans are omnivorous! The choices are ours now, and whether our decisions are right or wrong, worrying about each little one is useless because, look, you’re batting and now there’s another pitch coming! Life is going to throw all kinds of weird situations at us, so embrace those changes. Eat that strange looking bowl of noodles, start raising that poodle, buy that person flowers, stay at work after working hours, go with your friend to that concert with the strange K-pop band with the strange K-pop hair, drop that class, shake that…

Be serious if you want, be carefree if you want. Look at the world through a microscope, a telescope, or a kaleidoscope, or all of them at the same time! Above all, be kind, and love the people who make you happy and who make you strong. Behind every amazing actor and actress is a whole crew of make-up artists, cameramen, screenwriters, producers, and directors. Be grateful that you’ve made it with the help of others. If you’ve seen Frozen, you should know exactly how boring it is to build a snowman alone. You might start riding your bike around the hall or… talking to the pictures on the walls?

Look to the future, and get pumped! In a few short months we’re going to be launched into a new realm of unfamiliar faces, a realm where the buildings aren’t color-coded and the class names may be longer than 2 words. What LAS has done extraordinarily well is prepare us for the variety of the people living in this country; I believe there are few other schools that have students that can match LAS students’ tolerance for difference. We will keep that tolerance in college and forever, because if there’s anything more boring than going through life alone, it’s going through life surrounded by a group of clones.

Kurt Vonnegut said that, “We are here for no purpose, unless we can invent one.” We must remember always to search for that purpose, the shine that will make us happy. Whether we find it in the flow of a pen, the arc of a ball, the lens of a microscope, or the casual sun of a beautiful summer day, we must remember to search. We must remember the time we’ve spent until now, both good and bad, so that we’ll know the difference in the future. We must remember to be grateful. Above all, we must remember, that whether we came from north or south, whether we’re giving in or breaking out, pushing forward or falling behind, leaning left, leaning right, even if we’ve fallen down…

… always, always, always look up!

Congratulations, LAS Class of 2014! Let’s get ready for the most exciting years of our lives.