It is that time of year again. Graduation insanity: the inappropriate dress and too-high heels, the binge drinking, holding your friend’s hair back while she vomits behind a tree on her hands and knees, the dance moves that resemble some kind of fit, but seem totally tubular at the time.
OK, maybe that was just my grad. I digress.
With grad festivities just around the corner, more than one mom friend has told me she is worried sick not just about the parties, but about the relatively new tradition of a raucous camping trip that follows grad.
“Please just let my baby survive graduation,” these moms whisper.
Every year at this time, there are tragic headlines. Just last week, a Chicago mom attended commencement in her son’s place, because he had been killed in a drunk driving accident after prom. Heartbreaking.
Why is it a rite of passage to drink to excess or party for days on end? The strangeness of this mostly North American tradition was brought home to me when I was speaking with a group of international students from Asia. One girl cocked her head as she listened to me explain what the high school graduation traditions in Canada include.
Not only was she surprised the behaviour I described would be tolerated by parents, but she didn’t see what the fuss was about in the first place.
“But they haven’t accomplished anything yet,” the girl said bluntly, adding in Hong Kong, a doctorate degree would be celebrated, but short of that, no way.
A little harsh, but she has a point.
The graduation craziness sort of made sense in the 1950s, when fewer students graduated and attending university was rare. That was when students were often leaving youth behind to take a job or get married.
Today, in this region, most students graduate and the vast majority go on to post-secondary education. Most don’t even leave home for years after graduation. Over what exactly are they all going crazy?
It seems tradition is the primary reason we continue with this excessive, expensive and often dangerous rite of passage.
Nothing changes overnight, but hopefully as parents we can start to have conversations about this. Meanwhile, my fingers are crossed that all graduating students in the corridor survive the coming weeks.
