Commencement Speech

Welcome class of 2024, families, friends, and teachers. I think we can all agree that it's been a
crazy four years, from ending our 8th grade early to only having a couple months of freshman
year in person. Our friendships throughout the years have either taken their own paths or came
along with you. It's like rain where its purpose is to fill up a lake, river, pool, or even get a person
wet. We also have a purpose of being friends with someone so for a moment think about why
you are friends with the people you call your friends…now that you’ve thought of your purpose,
think about what life would be like if you were friends with someone for no reason.

Friendships come and go. The ones that go are the lessons you learn and the ones that stay
are the ones that give you hope. The ones that stay have been in your shoes of watching
someone go giving them a purpose to stay but is that purpose a good reason to stay or is it
sympathy? If you watched someone leave your friends life and you yourself didn’t enjoy this
friendship would you stay out of sympathy or would you also leave? Not all friendships are
forever but if you choose to stay, be a positive role model to your friend because remember they
have feelings too. If you choose to leave they make the person's life hard because no one in this
world is perfect.Good friendships have good outcomes. Good friendships are those types of
friendships where you uphold one another and even if you don’t talk all day everyday y’all still
talk as if y’all always see each other. Those types of friendships are the ones that last forever
because that’s how you know that they’re true friends. Friends like that are the ones that put
huge smiles on your face and those types of people are also the people that make you want to
push yourself because they’re the ones that give you motivation. Bad friendships are the
friendships where someone gaslights you and makes you feel like a bad person. Friendships
where you are jealous or envy someone are the friendships you should reevaluate because that
is a bad friendship. Manipulation in a friendship isn’t a good friendship either because you’re
supposed to support your friends and not make them feel like crap but sadly things like that
exist. Settling for good people even if losing friends is hard you’re better off living with positive
people and not people that can hurt you physically and mentally. Reevaluating your friendships
is one way of noticing bad from good. Thinking about each of your friendships also has you
thinking about how each person treats you. Think about how your friendships are and think
about how the person treats you and do they make you happy or do they hurt you all the time.
Think about all your memories with these people, are there good memories? Are there bad
memories? Are there both? Think about what could’ve gone wrong in the bad ones and
reminisce about the good ones.

I would like to thank the class of 2024 for being an amazing class of people who have been
through so much in this world. Thank you for participating in my little speech experiment about
friendships and I hope it helped y’all all see your friendships true colors and I wish you all the
best of your years. Congratulations class of 2024 and we’ll see each other once again. I wish
you all the luck in the world and I hope to continue seeing you all succeed. Thank you for
listening and congradulations.