Good advice

For graduates, graduates-to-be, and those of us who graduated long ago...






Thanks to Zen Pencils for the beautiful gesture.  Take a look at the archives for more!

June 5: End of School Karaoke Party!

It may not quite be the end of the year for everybody, but there's no doubt that everyone's counting down the days till summer vacation starts. 

Mark THIS day on your calendar, when the Teen Advisory Board is hosting an after school karaoke party!  Come unlease your inner diva and cheer on your friends!

You can browse song choices here.  Let us know what you'd like to sing and we'll get it on the playlist.

To all you graduates headed for college, work and the whole wide world

(For all you have learned, and will learn, live and, of course read.  Congratulations! we are all so proud of you.)



Marginalia

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

Billy Collins

Awww, it's just like 8th grade graduation!

The hugs, the tears, friends till the end!

*Sigh!* the end of an era...

Oh well.

Great Moments in Graduation History, Part Stupendous

You guys.

Congratulations, Class of 2011!  It has been a pleasure and an honor getting to know you (even the stuff we know about you that you don't know we know -- 'cause you talk loud, man...)

We do know you worked hard and are reaping the benefits; all week long I've been hearing about college plans and it's fantastic!

Stay in touch and let us know how you fare out there in the world!



(You can't tell from this trailer, but this movie is totally about graduation.  Also, a pen makes an excellent gift.)

Great Moments in Graduation, Part...wait, what part are we up to? Part 4!

I am a townie of this great city of Cambridge, which means I have a love-hate relationship with our Crimson neighbors.  On the one hand, thanks to them we have that many more bookstores, theaters, museums, burger joints, and cell phone stores.

On the other hand, tomorrow is Commencement, and that means the Square will be overrun with happy, harangued parents who want to know where McDonald's is.  Plus I can't cut through the Yard, curse it.

So I just stay away and give them all some space.  And if any of you guys are going to be in the graduating class of 2015, I am wicked proud of you.  Those of you who are going to be in M.I.T.'s class of 2015, come talk to me, because I have a lot of ideas I'd like you to work on with your Science.

Anyway, Great Graduation Moments!  I give you (drumroll) Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your Commencement Speaker!

Best. Graduation. Ever.  Some will live.  Some will be eaten.  Some will die and then rise again to cameo in Season Four.




Yay! thank you, slakat at Youtube!  Just skip all the solemn kissy-face bits and go straight to the demonslaying!  How on earth did they kit the whole graduating class out with bows and arrows?  And maces?*

Please note that all the books were safely removed from the library before detonation.**




*Please don't be packing on graduation, though.
**I in no way endorse blowing up your school.  Or your library!

Great Moments in Graduation History Pt 3: YIKES.

Inexcusable by Chris Lynch

"The way it looks is not the way it is."

Oh goodness, this is not your average senior-year story. It's got all the right pieces -- parties, football, prom, family. It doesn't take long, though, to realize there is something slightly wrong with the story you're reading and something terribly wrong with the boy who is telling it to you. As he plows through prom and graduation the reader gets a chilling look at the thin line between believing in yourself and lying to yourself.

Great Moments in Graduation History Pt 2: Look at These Old People Graduating!

The year was 1993.

The place was West Beverly High School.

The show was Beverly Hills 90210 (THE ORIGINAL, FOLKS).

The drama: Donna Martin was NOT going to graduate high school.

It's a really long story. She accidentally got drunk at prom (I know, I know, how do you accidentally get drunk at prom? Like I said, it's a long story). They weren't going to let her graduate. Her friends were all devastated. Donna was mortified.

The whole thing culminated in one of the cheesiest scenes in graduation history: the Donna Martin Chant.

Feast your eyes:


DID DONNA MARTIN END UP GRADUATING?!?! *

*yes she did

-Beth

Great Moments in Graduation History (pt. 1)

Let's start with a book shall we?

The View from the Top by Hillary Frank

In the months leading up to high school graduation there are about a million things you could choose to focus on. How awesome your post-graduation life is going to be. How terrifying your post-graduation life is going to be. All the people you never have to deal with again. How broken your heart is going to be because of all the people you aren't going to see everyday anymore. It seems like everything is about planning all the sudden, but what about right now? The View from the Top is about a group of seniors and the pressure they're feeling to define their friendships, to declare their love, and to figure out who they are -- all before graduation day.




(Stay tuned for more books, movies, shows and songs about graduation, and leave your own suggestions in the comments!)

Great Moments In Graduation History

It is officially nice out, summer is officially in sight, the countdown to graduation has OFFICIALLY BEGUN.

To celebrate juniors become seniors and seniors becoming DONE WITH HIGH SCHOOL FOREVER we're going to be running a new series on the blog called "Great Moments in Graduation History". Book reviews, movie clips and sad sad songs - all on the theme of graduation, new lives and saying goodbye.

Keep checking back, and leave your suggestions for great moments in the comments. And seniors? Don't forget to drop by the Teen Room and say goodbye to your Teen Librarians before you set off into the world. We'll miss your loud mouths.