He can kiss his diploma goodbye...Literally

God I am lucky my mom cared less than I did. Mom gets irritated anytime anything on TV refers to high school as being, like, the best years of your life or anything like that. She is pretty insistent that high school basically sucks compared everything before and after it.

Lapin wrote:

lemmingwriter wrote:

[...]
They actually had people patting us down when I graduated (2002). We had to show up carrying our cap, gown, and "approved" regalia accessories (cords and medallions from some academic departments and not others: IB and Tech, but not drama, etc)[...]

Yeah, they tried to tell me I couldn't wear my blue and gold cords I'd earned through Thespian Society/Drama. Oh hell no bitch, you remember that musical we just put on? The one that earned a lot of money and made the school look good? That show only opened on time because of me. (That's not bragging that's true. One of my crowning moments of awesome)

After arguing with the administrator, bringing the director over to argue with the administrator, and being cheered on by several bored groups of students looking for a good show, the Thespians won.

Our school is consistently on the top 25 lists of various high-achieving high schools. As a result, if your award wasn't "academic" (IB, Tech, SciOly, or ACAD) or didn't make the school look really fucking good (athletics, journalism, or speech/debate), then it wasn't allowed. Pretty much, it just singled out art, drama, and music, which weren't considered "real" subjects (our academic counselors used to tell us that). And we were told if we wore our drama medallions, they'd get taken away permanently. So we all decided to smuggle them in.

I hid mine in my bra, and let me tell you, it made the pat-down interesting when she got there and it made a lovely *clank* sound. The look on the school secretary's face was priceless. I got to keep the medallion, because I think she was a little too embarrassed by the encounter to report exactly where she'd found it.

I got lucky--my school, though as douchey as it was pretty much the entire time I went there, was amazing at graduation. We had to get there at 9 in the morning, bake out in the desert heat for about two hours, but when we got in everything went fine, except for some douchebags sitting directly behind me (I was in the very LAST row in the very LAST seat on one side) honking their horns. It was so bad that they honked it for like a minute and they had to recall this one girl's name because she began sobbing because of it. Our school doesn't like to give money to the art/drama kids, but they sure as hell gave them their cords. I raised hell because they tried to say that the Environmental Club wasn't integrated into the school. FUCK TO THE NO. We were the kids who fucking BOUGHT out of our OWN pockets the containers. We went through hell to get grants and money, and whatever we weren't able to get (which was about 500 bucks) we came up with on our own. Considering there were only 10 members, that's a lot of money since our school doesn't allow fundraising. 

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

God I am lucky my mom cared less than I did. Mom gets irritated anytime anything on TV refers to high school as being, like, the best years of your life or anything like that. She is pretty insistent that high school basically sucks compared everything before and after it.

Alright, your mom is awesome.

Ours was pretty strict, but not as strict as some of yours.

We were not allowed to have our phones with us or anything similar & the parents were not allowed air-horns, but most of us were "good" kids, and it wasn't a problem.

The running gag with our class was the "stabler face" (one of our teachers, who we all had several times, who was a pretty cool guy), so one of the students printed out a "stabler face" for each person, put them on paint stirrers (so it would be like a cheap mask), and "smuggled" them in [I don't think the faculty cared too much] We all held them up, when he (as our class sponsor) started making a speech. All 78 of us...

Still, I'd rather not have gone. Graduating High School meant little to nothing to me.

DarthDarthington wrote:

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

God I am lucky my mom cared less than I did. Mom gets irritated anytime anything on TV refers to high school as being, like, the best years of your life or anything like that. She is pretty insistent that high school basically sucks compared everything before and after it.

Alright, your mom is awesome.

Yeah, she is pretty cool.

Somebody started a petition about this:

Fire Suzanne Lukas

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

God I am lucky my mom cared less than I did. Mom gets irritated anytime anything on TV refers to high school as being, like, the best years of your life or anything like that. She is pretty insistent that high school basically sucks compared everything before and after it.

Your mom needs to have a talk with my mom.

At my graduation they didn't pat us down, but they made us open our robes and take off our hats. We were not allowed cell phones, beach balls and condoms. However one girl hid candy bars in her bra.

I remember graduation being rather boring and long. The only thing I remember from it is that during practice one assistant principals kept saying that we should all be dignified. I also remember that before the real ceremony took place me and my friends started the wave and then broke out into the Lumber Jack song.

At my graduation we were not allowed to wear anything over our robes (I wore a tasteful string of Mardi Gras beads just to fuck with the administrators, and to further fuck with them, every student took a lei with them onstage and put them around the principal's neck right before he shook our hands), though we were allowed two beach balls and we could blow bubbles in between speeches.

Then the superintendent of schools gave an extremely homoerotic speech about playing evening games of baseball with the nephew of the owner of McDonald's, which included beautiful lines like "every night, he would pitch and I would catch...his fastballs would always find their way into my soft leathery glove, and we would talk all the while, bending, stretching and throwing fastballs back and forth. He was pitcher and I was catcher" (Paraphrased). The entire L-Z block of chairs went red in the face from holding in laughter.

My high school graduation was in the same building as a rock concert. Pomp and Circumstance was drowned out by a guitar solo. The principal made some comment about how it epitomized the way education competes with popular culture, but he looked ready to cry. The Latin prof was facepalming until the music stopped.

Oh, my principal was a petty douchebag. He'd always hassle me, and I didn't know why. Maybe it was because I was never really involved in anything and saw my disinterest in school as some kind of crime against humanity. He was obviously into the kids who were into football, cheerleading, or National Honor Society- despite having the credentials to join NHS I was adamantly against it because it seemed hypocritical (no offense to anyone who was involved in organizations in high school). So I was lumped with the "bad crowd".

So when the time came to get my diploma, he handed it to me with that Dirty Harry smirk he'd always reserve for me. I took my diploma in one hand, gave him the finger with another. And I've never looked back since.

My high school graduation was super boring and strict. I had to struggle to not fall asleep.

This sort of shit always reeked of "Oh, look, we can control our students!", while they were just being humored.

This is only semi-related, but when I got my diploma my name was written down wrong.

8-letter limit on the name? What bull.

NastyHobbitses wrote:

At my graduation we were not allowed to wear anything over our robes (I wore a tasteful string of Mardi Gras beads just to fuck with the administrators, and to further fuck with them, every student took a lei with them onstage and put them around the principal's neck right before he shook our hands), though we were allowed two beach balls and we could blow bubbles in between speeches.

Then the superintendent of schools gave an extremely homoerotic speech about playing evening games of baseball with the nephew of the owner of McDonald's, which included beautiful lines like "every night, he would pitch and I would catch...his fastballs would always find their way into my soft leathery glove, and we would talk all the while, bending, stretching and throwing fastballs back and forth. He was pitcher and I was catcher" (Paraphrased). The entire L-Z block of chairs went red in the face from holding in laughter.

You actually remember the speeches? I don't really remember any of them, but that may be because I've gone to about 10 graduations in the past five years, so you tend to forget these things.

All I remember was all TEH DRAMA over the gowns, over who was class valedictorian, over what day the ceremony was going to be...

Yeah, my high school graduation was loads of fun.

Nihilist wrote:

So when the time came to get my diploma, he handed it to me with that Dirty Harry smirk he'd always reserve for me. I took my diploma in one hand, gave him the finger with another. And I've never looked back since.

My shoes were hurting me so bad I didn't think of that. Oh well.

So, just for the record, does anyone ever enjoy the graduation ceremony? Why do we even do this?

To walk the stage?

I hate ceremonies. If I wasn't expected to give a speech, if my parents and my whole family weren't so adamant, I would've just stayed home and picked up my diploma later.

My graduation ceremony was very boring. At practice, they had told us that we had to line up in a circle after the ceremony so we could throw our caps up in the air. Everyone was planning on doing it anyway when the principal said "Class of 2008". However, at the ceremony, everyone chickened out and word was spread that we weren't doing it because everyone's parents would be in the crowd. We actually didn't have anything interesting happen because almost everyone in my class was crazy religious and rule-abiding.

Our valedictorian made this long-ass speech in an obnoxious voice that included the line "We've all known each other since Kindergarten", which irritated me because I had only been living there for three years. Then again, no one at that school really liked me anyway because I was an outsider, so no one really cared. But still, she didn't actually have to say something like that. And after her speech, one of the other skanks girls in my class went up and started singing. I still don't know what that had to do with graduating high school, but I wasn't the only person who thought it was retarded.

However, I am one of the only people that didn't shake the SI's hand. I didn't see him behind the principal, so I just shook her hand and walked away. I only realized what I had done when I watched the DVD a few weeks later. Not like I regret it anyway, as the SI used to be the principal and never really liked me.

High school can kiss my ass and every single person who graduated with me can go fuck themselves.