Humor (Please Laugh)

Introduction

Prior to the humor unit, I never felt like I was a funny person. As I would watch stand-up comedians such as Vir Das and Trevor Noah I never understood how they could tell stories in such a humorous way while also conveying deeper messages on societal issues. My first “humor” project was my English podcast project which uses fart jokes to illustrate ideas on procrastination and the necessity of art. My second “humor” project is a commencement speech for my high school, I hope you laugh.

The fARTcast

The Commencement Speech

Wow, boy does it feel nice to not be giving a speech at a construction site without well-functioning wifi. This is a pretty good upgrade ASB. Class of 2021 we made it. After four years of sitting in class listening to our teachers give lectures for 90 minute block periods, one of us finally gets to do the talking… For five minutes. Before I continue I want to thank the teachers, staff, and students that have given me the wonderful opportunity to be addressing this crowd of masks and camera flashes today it truly means a lot. I also want to give another big thank you to Dr. Nellie Mayer, Principal Satterwhite, Ms. Woolfolk, and all the frontline workers that have worked tirelessly to give us some sense of normalcy during this unprecedented time. I finally want to give a personal thank you to my second school Freestyle academy for adding new perspectives to my life and further enriching my time here at LAHS.
While we may have spent much of our Senior year in our pajamas while looking at pixels which we called classmates instead of at football games or homecoming there is a lot that we took away from the experiences we did have. Coming into freshman year we were told to enjoy and cherish these four years and honestly I never truly understood what that meant until our high school experience “zoomed” away. Back then life was so simple and our worries consisted of whether to have the world’s most mediocre pizza at the pizza cart or march towards the back of campus to the taco truck, and not being caught by Julie’s golf cart while we would ride our bikes into campus. We went through mutual relaxation knowing that Freshman year wasn’t the determining factor in the success of our high school career and mutual embarrassment when we were seen wearing our PE uniforms while listening to Mr. Edwards give lectures on how discipline equals freedom. That lecture still haunts me today.
While freshman year was nerve-racking and filled with new experiences, we started to get a hang of things during Sophomore year, and before we knew it Junior year rolled around and we had to “buckle up”. I like to call this our spiderman year because this was the year we started to get a lot of freedom such as being allowed to drive but with that freedom came with a lot of responsibility such as AP classes, SAT prep, Varsity athletics, and Club presidencies. However, undoubtedly the biggest part of our junior year was the fact that we had a 2-week spring break. Remember on March 13th when we thought we would be back on campus in just two short weeks, yeah I remember that too. Those “two weeks” lasted a while didn’t they. But a great story such as our high school journey couldn’t have gone linearly and the pandemic was our iceberg. As we sat at home hoarding toilet paper, scrolling through tik tok, and freaking out over online AP exams we not only persevered as a class but grew as individuals. Then it was finally time.
After three years of hard work, we could finally relax with short schedules and zoom classes but there was one last important thing to do. We had to plan what we were going to do after high school, whether that be college or gap years or the marine corps. I think this idea is best described through a re-telling of a short metaphor story by Lance Jabr. Let’s say your a single guy and you decide that it’s time to get married. However, you’re still young and you don’t want to rush into anything so you spend years searching for the perfect girl. Every chance you get you seek to meet as many people as possible in hopes of finding the one. Some girls you like more than others, some are more nerdy, some party too much, some live in freezing climates but finally after months of searching you find her. She is just incredible, she is fun, smart, extremely attractive, and just about everything you want in a girl. So you decide to propose, but you only get one shot and you can’t afford to screw it up. You spend months agonizing about how you are going to do it, what are you going to say to her? So you set a deadline for yourself because you know you can’t put it off forever. And as the deadline approaches you start to get more nervous. Are you good enough? Did you get good enough grades? But is that all she wants? Oh god her acceptance rate is so low? And then the deadline approaches, oh god you’re so nervous your sweating all over the place. She’s definitely out of your league. Can you go back? How many mistakes have you made so far? Aah. Then it’s finally over, you’ve clicked submit and there is nothing more you can do. She then looks deep into your eyes and says, lemme get back to you in a few months. That is pretty much what any post-high school application is like. Even though our senior year wasn’t normal we didn’t completely lose out on the senior experience, did we? However, what I believe is most important is that we did not shy away from the challenges in front of us and we looked at our situation the right way.
If the past four years have taught us anything it is that in life, events are gonna happen and it is how you look at those situations that determine the quality of life that you are going to live. As long as you look at your life as a series of situations instead of as challenges or accidents you will lead a life full of smiles. So as we part ways for now remember the situations we went through, remember the times we had and take these moments to better yourself. Thank you and congratulations class of 2021.