Ten years ago (two weeks from today will make it exactly 10 years), I spoke at my high school graduation. A few weeks ago, in my post “On Being More Than One Thing,” I mentioned being the valedictorian of my high school class. In that post, I wrote:
I didn’t want it — I didn’t want all these people’s assumptions about me to be right, I didn’t want to make a speech in front of a group of people I mostly felt indifferent if not negative toward, — and I also didn’t think I deserved it. There were people who cared way more about school than I did and worked really hard for their grades. I wanted one of them to get it. It would mean something really special to them, while it would only be a source of discomfort for me. But, because of the weighting of honors and AP courses, it did turn out to be me. I may have been the first valedictorian in history that contemplated asking their guidance counselor if they could just give the title to someone else.
Unfortunately, since giving the title to someone else was not an option (not to mention my mom would probably have murdered me in my sleep if I had actually done that), I had to make the speech. I remember sitting down at the computer (my family’s one computer, in the pre-everyone-has-their-own-laptop-days) and staring at a blank word document. I would write a few sentences, and then erase them. Finally, I put together an early draft of something incredibly cliche — something that I probably thought sounded meaningful, like what a graduation speech “should” say, but even I knew they were just empty words.
One day I decided to stop trying to speak to everyone. My graduating class was fairly large (about 500), and except for all of maybe 25 people who really cared about what I had to say, no one was even going to be listening. I deleted the whole thing and wrote something new. About a third of it was just a bunch of inside jokes with all of the various groups I floated between in high school. Aside from a core group of 4 or 5 really close friends, I never felt fully accepted over those four years; as I described in the other post, people made a lot of assumptions about me because I did well in school. But, because I was nice, and because people liked my best friends enough to let me tag along to stuff, I was able to be on the periphery of a lot of various cliques. I partied with the “cool kids,” I had classes with the “nerds,” the group I played field hockey with in fall was different than the one I played tennis with in the spring, senior year I made a whole new group of friends due to having a double period of AP Biology (two hours a day is a lot of time to spend with one group). I was sort of everywhere and nowhere during those years, but I decided I’d take a few jokes and experiences I had with each of those groups and throw them into the speech as I figured those people would be the only ones listening.
Even with this new approach, I felt I had to give the speech some kind of overall message or theme. At one point, I included the line:
“Whether the past 4 years have been the best years of your life or the bane of your existence, whether you spent high school with a large group of acquaintances or one single best friend, whether you spent your weekends studying intently or hugging a toilet…”
I didn’t think anything of this line and I completed my final draft of the speech and went about my business. In the days leading up to graduation, during “graduation practice,” they asked everyone making a speech to run through it once or twice with the theater teacher so she could talk to us about “how to project our voice.” (Code for: we really need to fill these days with meaningless activities somehow.) When I got to that line, the theater teacher was horrified. She stopped me, in front of everyone else in the room, and chastised me. She told me she was going to talk to someone about having that line removed. She said it was inappropriate to insinuate that students at our school were drinking (reminder for any non-Americans reading this: the legal drinking age in the U.S. is 21). I responded, “But some were! [I wanted to add, INCLUDING ME!] And this is just supposed to make a point about people being different but also the same, it’s not really about drinking,” but she was not having it. The valedictorians from the six high schools in my county had to send copies of our speeches to our local paper to be printed, and she insisted she would make sure I did not send that to the paper. Funny enough, re-reading the speech for this post I noticed there was also a line about reuniting with old friends and forming an unbeatable Quarters team, but she either had never heard of the game of Quarters or was so annoyed with me by that point that she had stopped listening, because she left that part alone.
A day or two later, I spoke to the woman in charge of graduation. I actually went to her daughter’s graduation party just so I could speak to her, at her house, because I felt so strongly about this. I told her that acting like no high school student had ever “hugged a toilet” was not only unrealistic, but in context of the line I was making a general point and trying to point out the extremes in people’s high school experience; it wasn’t necessary to change this line. The graduation coordinator told me she actually agreed with me but said it would be less of a headache for us all if I just changed it. I took pity on the tone in her voice. I felt like she knew she couldn’t force me to do anything but was asking me to do her a favor and make her job easier. I asked what would happen if I just changed the line for the paper and not the actual speech. She got awkward and stammered, “[Theater teacher] is really is upset by the idea of parents and school district officials hearing this at graduation…” I felt this wasn’t a fight worth having, and I begrudgingly changed the line to “whether you spent your weekends intently studying or intently partying” and sent it to the paper.
A couple days later, I arrived at school for graduation. We were all supposed to meet at the school, wait around for a bit, and then ride buses to the venue where our graduation was to be held. As I was wandering around the school, someone stopped me in the hallway. I had known this girl since elementary school, we always had a lot of friends in common, but she always bordered on being a little mean and I was never exactly sure where we stood with one another. She said, “I heard what happened with your speech…you need to say the original line.” I was taken aback. Only a few people knew about what had happened and I had no idea how she would have heard. It didn’t exactly seem like exciting high school gossip to me. I gave a noncommittal, “haha, yeah, I don’t know about that…” and she said, “Sarah, please, say what you wanted to say.” I walked away from her thinking the exchange was a bit odd, but then someone else stopped me and said something similar. And then a third person. I had no idea where all these people were even hearing about this, or why they cared. At one point, someone said, “This is YOUR speech. And you’re talking to US.”
I started walking back to my assigned room, feeling weird about all this attention, when I was stopped by a fourth person. This was a girl who had been one of my best friends from around age 7 to around age 12. Over time, we had grown apart naturally, but we never had a falling out. There was always a heavy mutual respect there. She, like the first girl, begged me to say my original line. She ended with, “If you do it, I will make sure everyone in my row gives you a standing ovation.” I couldn’t have cared less about the standing ovation, I actually hate that type of attention, but the fact that she felt so strongly about this that she would say that really got to me. Maybe it was because she played such an integral role in my childhood, or maybe it was because she was the fourth person to randomly approach me about this, but I started to seriously consider doing it.
As I rode the bus to the venue, I thought it over. “What are they going to do, NOT give me my diploma?!,” I mused. “Plus, I already sent the ‘appropriate’ version to the paper…” I started to feel like I should do it. Something about so many people coming up to me that morning, some of whom I hadn’t really spoken to in years, some of whom I didn’t think even cared about me one way or the other, had really made me feel like for whatever reason, this was important to people. I made the speech with the original line. As I walked off the stage, the graduation coordinator rolled up her program and swatted me with it and said, “You’re going to get me in trouble!”…but it was said in just enough of a sing-songy voice that I picked up on the implied, “I would have done the same thing in your shoes.” In a shocking development, they didn’t withhold my diploma, the superintendent didn’t shut down the school, life just went on.
At the time, I felt a little important. Like people cared so much about this injustice that had been done to me that they wanted to advocate for me personally. It took a few years for me to realize that this was not actually about me at all. My classmates would have reacted this way no matter who was speaking. This was about something bigger than me. People wanted to hear from their peer directly. They didn’t want an edited version, altered by some out-of-touch theater teacher. They wanted it to be real. Even at age 17 or 18, they craved authenticity. They craved it so much that demanded it of me; they pleaded with me for it.
It’s 10 years later now, and authenticity is more desired than ever, but at times feels even harder to find. Social media both helps and hinders this. Instagram is often a carefully curated set of only our best moments. Many people use Facebook in the same way, if they use Facebook at all (if they’re not using it to brag about the best parts of their life, then they’re using it for political discussion). I’d argue Twitter is the best place to find authentic people online as you can always find people you relate to on just about any topic, but even there, it can be tough at times. It is easy to pick out people who are honest, direct, and straightforward, but they can still feel rare to find. I’ve seen people share blog posts or other media that gets a ton of attention for the simple fact that it is relatable and comes across as “real.” Recently, I posted something about all the things I was sorry for saying to single friends when I was in a relationship. Someone tweeted at me, “Its stupid rare that articles like this arent afraid of truth: ‘Things don’t always work out the way they should or the way people deserve.’” I think it’s a little sad that this type of honesty is seen as “stupid rare.” I know people have a variety of reasons for holding back on the internet, and some of those reasons are professional and I respect that, but, the fact is, we are all human. We are all going through the same stuff. We, more than possibly anything else, want to know we aren’t alone in what we feel or experience. So, why is it so hard to find people who will talk about their experiences honestly?
In real life, I pride myself on being straightforward. Someone who isn’t afraid to say what needs to be said. Someone who puts things bluntly to the degree that it can at times be borderline awkward. (Okay, more than borderline.) Someone who, as far back as college, people sought out to help them write e-mails that had to make a specific point about a controversial topic. (In college, when something would happen in a student organization or a class that required a stern written response, friends would joke that the situation required a “sarahhuttonemail,” like it was one word.) Someone who, just last week, was the youngest person in the room at a meeting with a high-ranking official in State Government, and when we were asked to share things that hindered our jobs that the Governor could help with and everyone else seemed to be tiptoeing on eggshells and afraid to tell the truth, I listed a bunch of different things (which caused everyone else to go “Oh yeah, I agree!”) until the leader of the meeting said he was overwhelmed and we would need to have a separate meeting with the Governor himself so he could “hear the passion in our [read: my] voices.” Someone who works for an organization in which the president once had to tell my direct supervisor, “Sarah is a….straight shooter…and that’s great and all…but if you could ask her to tone that down in tomorrow’s meeting that might be best.” Being direct, while it can occasionally cause problems, is something I am proud of. And it’s something that I think translates fairly accurately online. I try to be a little more polite online than in real life because I think the nature of the written word can cause more misunderstandings than real life interactions, but I still try to get my point across. I have had people online seek me out for advice specifically because they know I’ll tell them the truth. And through being this way, I’ve gotten to know and respect other people who are just as, if not more, direct and authentic than me.
However, despite considering myself a pretty authentic person, online and off, there are still things I hold back on. Specifically, I’m not good at telling people when I’m upset about something or going through something difficult. It’s not even an intentional hiding of anything, it’s just my natural reaction to things to opt for a sarcastic comment, to make fun of something (including making fun of myself), and to keep the conversations with other people light and deal with the tough stuff on my own (I have joked that I am the Chandler of my Friends group.) Last year, when I went through a serious breakup, someone I consider one of my best friends told me she was upset I hadn’t confided in her more, and that it made her feel like I didn’t consider us good enough friends to talk to about the situation (she wisely chose a long car ride to talk to me about this, where I couldn’t escape, and one where I was driving so I couldn’t even act distracted). That caught me very off guard, because I do consider her a close friend, and I wasn’t purposely withholding, it is just my natural way. After that, I periodically made a point of sharing my feelings in a group chat she and I share with a few others. At one point, another friend said, “I appreciate you sharing this with us, I know you don’t always like to talk about your feelings.”
Just as my direct nature translates to the internet, this aspect of my personality does as well. I was recently talking to some people in a Twitter group chat and I mentioned the fact that I’d been in a weird headspace for a couple weeks but had been avoiding discussing it. One of them said, “You know you can always talk to us if you want, god knows I tell you a ton of details about my personal life all the time,” and I responded something about it being hard to describe in a text — which was partially true, but was partially an excuse. I don’t know why I am this way, and it’s something I am slowly trying to get better at, but it’s been a long process.
Although I don’t always like doing it, whenever I have shared these types of details, whether online or in real life, it has always been well-received. Two months ago, I shared what may be the most personal post I have ever written. I didn’t expect it to really resonate with people, because I felt like it was so specific to my own life. I didn’t think anyone who didn’t personally know me or the person it was about would find it interesting. But the responses I got from people (both online and off) were so unexpectedly emotional. Real life friends said they cried when they read it. People on Twitter messaged me privately to talk about their own best friends, or people they had lost far too young in life. One person said I inspired them to write a similar reflective piece, which they then did but didn’t want to publish publicly so they sent it only to me; it was full of extremely personal information and I felt truly honored that someone would choose me of all people to share this stuff with.
I say all that to say, just like my classmates 10 years ago, people today still crave authenticity. And while it can feel awkward or uncomfortable to share certain aspects of our lives or personalities, in the long run I think being truly authentic helps more than it hurts. It is easy to tell ourselves that no one really cares what we have to say, the way I told myself while writing my graduation speech 10 years ago. But you truly never know who wants or needs to hear what is on your mind. Since you probably don’t have a bunch of people coming up to you in a hallway and begging to hear your honest thoughts on a topic, let me be the one to say it:
Your story is worth telling, in your own voice. Someone, somewhere, wants or even needs to hear what you have to say. Just as someone 10 years ago told me, “This is YOUR speech, and you are talking to US,” let me say to you: this is YOUR story, and you are telling it to us. You might not ever meet or even be aware of the person or people your words impact, but they will undoubtedly have an impact nonetheless. Don’t let feelings of awkwardness or shame or vanity or whatever else hold you back from being true to yourself, your beliefs, and your story. Be honest, be real, be authentic.
It’s easy to forget at times, but when all is said and done, it’s what people want from you the most.
