14 - My entertainment speech

My fellow students, we only arrived here four short years ago, and now it's already time to leave. How did it all go so fast? It seems like only yesterday that we were little freshmen trying to figure out where our next class was, and looking generally clueless to all the seniors. Now we are the seniors, the seniors who stand here ready to graduate and move forward in the world. Yet at this moment, we can't help looking back.

How do we measure the time we've spent in high school? In the beginning, we measured it in class periods, counting down the day to eventual freedom. As the days and weeks passed, we measured it in semesters, and later in years as we moved from being those clueless freshmen, to becoming sophomores who thought they had it all figured out. By the time we reached our junior year, we were confident that we were prepared to take over for the graduating seniors, and we couldn't wait to "rule the school."

And now here we stand. Our rule is over, and it's up to the next class to step into our shoes and take over. I know that as I look out at all of you, I will measure my time here in a much different way. I will measure it in all the friendships I've enjoyed these last four years. Some were pretty casual and others were much closer, but I'll remember each one fondly, as I'm sure you all will, too. And when many of our high school memories begin to fade, that's how we'll ultimately measure the time we spent here, not in periods or semesters or years, but in the friendships that we made and the times we shared together.