TEDx Talk: How to Finish High School

Speaker: Blake Fly

Source: YouTube Video

By the end of my time today, my hope is to explain how a piece of cardboard can teach this underrated but important lesson to students, which is how to finish high school. Let me explain.

The summer after high school, I had my dream job. I was a grocery clerk at IGA. But it was my dream job because after three years of being a grocery clerk, I was promoted to night shift. So that meant I got to spend my summers overnight at the IGA. So this is a pretty sweet gig—just finished high school, I’m a man now, and I’m working at the grocery store. Except every night consisted of the exact same thing. I would sit on a milk crate and I would just look at the aisles with all the products. Now, I’d just organize them so that they looked straight, and I made sure that the French label was facing the right way, the English label was facing the right way. It was thrilling. And I would look at the time and realize that six minutes had passed, eleven minutes had passed.

Though in all seriousness, this was a dream job because I was given an assignment at the end of high school by one of the most awesome mentors ever—someone by the name of Lori Lisi. She, for whatever reason, agreed to coach myself and a friend of mine who were chosen to be the valedictorians. Pressure! So the assignment was: make a speech to talk about high school in like 20 minutes to everyone at graduation in the fall. We all returned to get your diploma.

So, at the grocery store, one of my lists of cardboard was to write down what flavor of pop I had to put on the shelves—Coca-Cola, Pepsi, ginger ale. But that summer was different because I had a second piece of cardboard. And on the second piece of cardboard, I wrote down every single memory that struck me about life as a high school student—the lows, the highs, and the mediums. So for eight hours at night, overnight, I was spending time crafting ideas to go into our presentation.

The only reason I share that is because not many students are given this assignment after high school, saying, “What were the lows and the highs of all of high school?” So in doing this process, not only did I become this very zenned-out grocery clerk, but it also made me appreciate so many of the little moments in time that I would have completely forgotten about in high school had I not been given the assignment to recollect all of it.

I then realized, “Hey, wait a minute, there’s been a lot of people who’ve been playing a major role in my life since year one of high school until moment final of high school.” So I decided to actually acknowledge a few of the people who I put on my piece of cardboard, and I wrote them some letters before I went away to university. I’d never written letters to close people in my life. You know, I might have written a birthday card or something, but I wrote a letter to my mom, I wrote a letter to my dad, my brother, my sister, my grandparents, some of my close friends. I just went for it. I even indented because that’s what I learned in high school.

Except I didn’t realize that in giving these people this handwritten letter about reflections on high school, that it would then crack open that relationship and make it into something even more meaningful. I had conversations with mom and dad that I had never had before at a pivotal moment in time, going away to college. I had conversations with my brother and sister—brothers and sisters rarely have—because it was my job to annoy them up to that point. I’m the youngest, so I make their life miserable for 12 years of my schooling, and then I say, “By the way, I have feelings. Thank you for your impact on me.” And when you write a letter to your grandparents, if you have the ability to do that, that’s pretty cool, ‘cause they really didn’t even see that one coming. And to my friends, same deal, because you really only give those little notes to friends on like birthdays, maybe Valentines—you get the idea. But I just did it for me, kind of to unload some things, to figure it out while writing a speech on a piece of cardboard.

The reason why I share this is because now I’ve come to realize the power of a simple step such as that for a student in their final year of high school. We gave that valedictorian speech. We were sweating for months leading up to it. We felt ready. We delivered it at graduation with our caps and gowns. It went pretty well, and I just realized, “Hey, this was a gift to get to package high school in a message and then share it with the peers—people who liked us, people who hated us, and everybody in between.” So I just figured, well, this was kind of cool, and I’ve now actually spun that into my work, and that’s why I get to hang out with students so often. I basically travel around the continent giving presentations to new students entering college, university, the high school students, and the elementary school students.

One of my favorite conversations to have is specifically with students in their final year of high school, because that is one of the most deer-in-headlights moments of life. So that leads me to this stuff, because this here is typically what one would see at a graduation—a stack of diplomas. Awesome! My diploma! That’s why I’m here. I wanted to get one of those. It’ll look sweet online, because this is what we’re in it for. Except there’s this issue with the diploma. Every school’s might look a little different, but in all the times that I’ve spoken to graduates and seen their diplomas at their big celebration, there’s a very consistent theme. The information on a diploma at the end of high school usually says: name of school, name of student, and the date they graduate. Those are very important details, except one thing is missing. Because if it’s just school, student, and date of graduation, we’re missing the most important piece, which is the date in which it all began.

Because when we only look at grad as the piece that matters on the piece of paper, everyone’s just running to the destination, hoping they get there still with some gas in the tank as a high school student. Whereas if we equally acknowledge the beginning and the whole time in between, that’s when students really have this opportunity to say, “Well, I know that this is a day I’m picking this up—cool—but it’s also reminded me of all the days that I was here.” Super cool, because even though these things are usually stacked up, they look quite similar—different names, a few different details—the contents of those diplomas are so vastly different for everybody that we can’t even measure it. Although we as human beings are quite similar, our journey through a time in life such as high school has moments that are so specific to each of us that only we can really remember them. And it’s not always easy to remember them, but if we think about it, we can.

One of these might be a student who wanted so badly to be an athlete, so even though they tried out every single time to make the team, they didn’t get it—that’s part of their story. Maybe this student is the person who got straight A’s from day one all the way to the end, breezed through the academics without even lifting a finger, except perhaps they were also that person who was just aching for one friendship because they went so deep on the academics that perhaps they missed the opportunity to just have casual conversations, make a friend, get into some reasonable—but not illegal—amount of trouble. Perhaps this student is the one who showed up terrified and shaking because, according to television, high school was scary, and then by the end they had done so many things for so many other people that they even surprised themselves with the friends they made, the extracurriculars they were involved in, the grades they actually earned, the teachers that they met, the coaches that they learned from. Every single one of these things is packed with stories, yet all in the actual document, we’re only given the ribbon for when they arrived.

I’m not saying this is a problem. I’m saying this is an opportunity for us to work with students so that they make the time to appreciate what they’ve accomplished before they actually leave our high schools. So when I work with a graduating group of students, secretly it’s one of the coolest moments in time for me, because I see the nerves, the stress, the anxiety, and the excitement all just packed into the same student. And as I’m looking into the audience of students, I basically just have this simple little idea to just take a breath. Because I remember in my last year of high school, I forgot to. I was doing calculus one, I was doing the second calculus, and I forgot to actually take a moment in time to just say, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. This will be good. This will be cool. We’ll get through this.” But unlike most other students, I was the one who, for whatever reason, was tapped on the shoulder and was forced to sit on a milk crate all summer in a grocery store and ask myself what happened in the last chapter of my life.

And I’m not suggesting that we make that mandatory as part of high school, because let’s be honest, no one’s going to necessarily get excited to do it. Though if in the last chapter of high school, instead of saying, “Work, work, work, work,” because there’s a lot on the line, I see so much power in saying, “Work, breathe, work, breathe.” And I’m not just saying this for students. I say this when I work with teachers, I say this when I work with parents, I say this when I work with anyone who was invested in the success of a high school student, because we’re all going through the same ride, we just each play a different part in this play. Students are the lead character, doing their final year, rushing to grad, but we are all playing a key role.

So instead of just talking all about it as a way to basically bring students in and get them to try this out, I’ve noticed something incredibly powerful, which is giving students something to write on and something to write with, and some time for them to actually put a pen to paper and articulate who has impacted them and how have they impacted them, and then, too, with that, give it to them. Because for the students listening right now, you at some point will be lined up ready to get one of these things, and it will be awesome. Congratulations in advance. Though before you do that, if you do this, you will actually have a conversation that some people never will.

So I have students write four thank-you cards. Four thank-you cards that I never would have written unless someone put me on a milk crate and made me write a speech.

The first one is to thank your teachers, because when you finish high school, it’s not just about the grades you get so that you have a ticket out of here; it’s also about the people who helped you earn those grades. And when I say teachers, I’m not only suggesting the people at the front of the classroom. I’m also suggesting any single individual who has cruised the hallways of your high school who has taught you something. This could be your math teacher, this could be your guidance counselor, this could be your basketball coach, this could be the custodian who keeps your school beautiful and tells you stories every day and smiles more than anyone else in the school, this could be the secretary at the office who is essentially running Grand Central Station for a living, and without them, these buildings wouldn’t even be able to stand.

The second one is to thank your friends, because here’s the thing: everyone gets stoked for grad. “Hey, graduation’s coming, let’s have a party, let’s take pics, let’s do something.” Except they do that at graduation, and by then it’s already done. Whereas in that last chapter of high school, those last few months, it’s not about avoiding the work, but in addition to doing your work, also make time to spend moments with friends that will no longer be as easy to have. Because after high school, people scatter. People move to different cities, different countries, they might just move houses, but even if they still live on the same street as you, things change a little bit. So thank those close friends while you are still in school. It might be weird and awkward at first, but deep down, they will appreciate the appreciation.

The third card is to your family. This one gets super weird, because I don’t know about you, but being 17, 18, 19 and thanking mom and dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa—whew, that’s hard. Because let’s be honest, there’s three events in life where we do really good at appreciating people publicly: one of them is graduation, one of them is weddings, and the third is funerals. They’re all important. Though if we do a great job at honoring the lives and the impact of people at the end of their life, imagine the power of doing that during their life.

And then the fourth card, the hardest one, the trickiest one, the one that is the easiest to avoid, is to thank yourself. Because if you’re a student right now, growing up, going through high school, about to graduate someday, you are going through one of the most difficult and rewarding jobs of all time. Don’t let that go to your head, but do give yourself the much-needed pat on the back, because to wrap up high school now means you have overcome a whole lot of hurdles that didn’t even exist in the past. Except you now have more capabilities, more power, more solutions to all those things, but don’t forget to acknowledge yourself before you pick up your diploma at the end.

So the point of this was essentially to say how to finish high school, because we do a pretty good job at starting people off, but sometimes people then just rush to the end. But before you graduate, make the time to acknowledge the people in your life—not for just what they’ve helped you do, but more importantly, who they’ve helped you become.

Thank you.

“The Ten Years After High School” – Stacie Sybersma (TEDxUCCI)

Opening

In January, I received the invitation to attend my 10-year high school reunion, and I was shocked. High school did not feel like it was ten years ago. So, to be invited to something that was a celebration of ten years, when it only felt like a couple of months—maybe a year or two—really threw me for a loop.

I began thinking of what reunions meant to me, and ideas of TV shows and movies, where they depict cheerleaders marrying deadbeat guys and jocks getting fat and bald, were the only images that I had. And they were very critical and condescending, and they weren’t very inviting or warm.

I began going through all my accomplishments over the last ten years, thinking about what I’ve done and what I would tell my classmates: the places I went to school, the degrees I’ve collected, the places that I’ve traveled to, where I’ve lived, my job. But something about that felt really hollow, like that was not possibly all I’ve done over the last ten years.

So I kept mulling this over in my mind—what I’ve accomplished, reunions—and something became clear to me while I was doing that. And that was: over the last ten years of my life, my biggest accomplishment wasn’t that I’ve gotten degrees and I’ve started a great job and I live in a fancy condo. It was that I’ve grown from the person that I was in high school into a confident, self-sufficient adult.

The ten years after high school are really hard. There are a lot of young people in the room today, and this talk is catered to you—the people who are in the process of this ten-year journey. You’re going to learn a lot of hard lessons about heartbreak and failure, and picking yourself up when you’ve fallen down. But when you get through that and look back, you’re going to have such a sense of fulfillment and relief and joy and celebration for the person that you become.

As you journey through all those really hard lessons, you have to find your path during this time period, and that’s really scary. But you also have to find out who you are as a person.

Personal Story & Lessons

For me, I graduated with an Associate’s Degree in Natural Science from UCCI in 2009, continued my education and graduated with a Bachelor’s in Biology in 2012, and a Master’s of Marine Management in 2015. In between, I completed numerous internships and side jobs—some of which are providing comical stories to color this TEDx talk! I experienced heartbreak and fell in love. I traveled, moved out of my parents’ house, got my first “real job,” and, most importantly, I got a dog.

There were many hiccups along the way, and many lessons learned. But all in all, the crazy ride was worth it, as today, I have a self-described “dream job” as the Environment, Health and Safety Specialist at the Caribbean Utilities Company. In my spare time, I hang out with my rescued doggie, Missy.

Advice to Young Adults

So, to all the young people in the room: don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Don’t be afraid to try new things, to move to a new city, to take a job that maybe you don’t think is your dream job, but it could lead you to something else. Don’t be afraid to fail, because that’s how you learn. And don’t be afraid to reach out for help, because there are so many people who have been through this before you, and they want to see you succeed.

The ten years after high school are going to shape who you are for the rest of your life. Embrace the journey, embrace the mistakes, and celebrate every little victory along the way.

Thank you.