After the Cap is Thrown

The many western high school films I’ve grown up watching have always steadily concluded in the graduation scene. A resolution found between basketball and musical performance was celebrated with the toss of a cap at High School Musical protagonist Troy Bolton’s commencement ceremony, and the handing of a high school diploma represented the result of overcoming countless mental health obstacles over the course of four years for one of the main characters in Degrassi High: Next Generation’s Maya Matlin. 

There’s a popular belief that the conclusion of one’s high school journey represents the end of a majority of their personal growth and development. The journey after high school seems rather linear and insignificant: go to college, get a job, start a family, and work until the day you inevitably die (all with relatively the same belief system and habitus as your freshly graduated, eighteen-year-old self). 

But as my high school journey comes to an end and I begin to say my farewells to the people, places, and routines that have defined this minuscule yet seemingly never-ending time in my life, I’ve grown to see just how inaccurate the portrayal of high school graduation really is in much-loved TV shows and films. 

Rather than viewing the obstacles I’ve overcome here as a narrative that culminates in closure, I see them as a prologue to the broader arc of my life. 

I often go back to rewatch the graduation scene of Canadian TV series Degrassi High: Next Class, trying to envision the future of all my favourite characters as they get called to walk up on stage and accept their diploma. 

As Principal Simpson announced each student’s name along with their chosen university and major, I struggled to discern that each student, all of whom had reached the end of their narrative arcs, had anything significant waiting for them thereafter. In a sense, it seemed unrealistic, also, for a class full of students barely out of adolescence, to express scarcely any apprehension about what their future endeavours might hold. 

Grace Cardinal, who had been struggling with life-threatening bronchitis throughout the entire series, had miraculously found a way to treat herself and pursue a university degree just in time for the season's end. 

Miles Hollingsworth, is able to navigate his sexual identity, a feat most don’t come to terms with until their later adult life, and closes his journey by reconciling with his previous boyfriend. 

Most notably, Maya Matlin is a young musician whose entire life was almost literally taken by her battle with depression. Having fully overcome her mental health struggles, she is left with no discernible conflicts or narrative arcs to carry forward as she tosses her cap at the commencement ceremony. 

The idea that one can “figure everything out” by the end of high school obscures the reality that identity is shaped over time through repeated choices, changing environments, and new forms of responsibility beyond those exclusive to high school. Our most formative experiences are often those that take place during our school years, and it's inevitable that the end of this chapter also represents the culmination of many lessons and components of your identity. And perhaps graduation is a celebration of that, but it should be a celebration of a starting point rather than the commemoration of the end.

I now also understand my high school experiences as the catalyst for a larger sense of responsibility. Each choice I make moving forward, from what I study, to the work I pursue, and the communities I deliberately involve myself in, will shape my future. But more importantly, it will impact the lives of others. Graduation represents less of an ending and more of an entrance into a world where the industries I support, the policies I advocate for, the communities I build and the values I support carry tangible consequences beyond our field of vision. 

Throughout my years in school, I have come to learn about and see societal inequalities and systems far larger than the contained classroom, driving me to confront questions about global development, privilege, and ethical responsibility in ways that can not nearly be resolved at merely seventeen years old. In this increasingly polarised political climate marked by economic instability, environmental decline, and alarmingly wide social division, we are inheriting problems that demand urgent engagement as we move past high school. 

In these regards, our story does not conclude with the turning of the tassel; it begins with the responsibility that follows.