• Entertainment
  • Environment
  • Information Science and Technology
  • Social Issues

Home Essay Samples Education

Essay Samples on Graduation

Graduation is an exciting time in any student’s life. It’s a time to celebrate achievements, reflect on the past, and look towards the future. If you’re tasked with writing an essay on this topic, it can be a daunting task. However, with some helpful tips and graduation essay examples, you can craft a perfect essay about graduation.

One way to approach an essay on graduation is to focus on a particular moment or experience from the graduation ceremony. For example, you might write about the feeling of receiving your diploma or the emotions you felt as you walked across the stage. By focusing on a specific moment, you can create a more compelling and personal essay.

Another approach is to write about the broader significance of graduation. You can explore the importance of education, the challenges that students face, and the impact that graduation has on individuals and society. By taking a more philosophical approach, you can create a more thought-provoking essay that engages readers on a deeper level.

When it comes to graduation essay topics, the possibilities are endless. You might write about the history of graduation ceremonies, the impact of technology on graduation, or the role of graduation in different cultures. Whatever topic you choose, make sure it’s something that you’re passionate about and that you can explore in depth.

In conclusion, writing a perfect essay about graduation requires creativity, passion, and attention to detail. By using graduation essay examples and following the tips above, you can craft an essay that celebrates the importance of graduation and inspires readers to reflect on their own educational journeys.

How a Graduate Degree Can Help You Achieve Your Career Goals

Graduate degrees serve as powerful catalysts for propelling career ambitions to new heights. In a world where expertise, specialization, and innovation are highly valued, pursuing advanced education opens doors to enhanced opportunities and the realization of long-term career goals. This essay explores the symbiotic relationship...

  • Career Goals

Career Goals After Graduation: Mapping the Journey

Career goals after graduation mark the beginning of an exciting journey towards professional fulfillment and personal growth. As the academic chapter comes to a close, the canvas of possibilities opens up, and graduates are poised to pursue their aspirations in the workforce. In this essay,...

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Gap Year: Exploring Paths of Exploration and Reflection

The concept of taking a gap year — a deliberate break between high school and further education or employment — has gained significant attention in recent years. This period of exploration and self-discovery offers both advantages and disadvantages that influence an individual's personal and professional...

My Convocation Day: An Experience I Will Never Forget

For most people, their graduation day is one of the memorable and the best days of their life the same goes to me. Many people have experienced the overwhelming excitement feeling as you approach graduation day, and for me, that was a day that I...

  • Personal Experience

What I Want To Do After My Graduation

Graduation is an exciting time for my life, specially a university’s graduation. When I think of family and relatives, friend gathering together to celebrate a gratifying event, I feel I accomplished my goal. Graduating from university give me a valuable outlook. So, you just graduated...

Stressed out with your paper?

Consider using writing assistance:

  • 100% unique papers
  • 3 hrs deadline option

A College Degree: The Next Step or a Mere Stepping Stone

In our modern economic climate it is a commonly held concern that continuously rising tuition prices will excel the financial benefits of possessing a college degree. Understandably, many people thus feel that pursuing a college degree is not worth the sacrifice of their time and...

  • Bachelor's Degree

Prom Night and Prom Limo Rentals as Integral Parts of Graduation

Do you want you make your child’s prom night or graduation one they'll always remember? With reasonable and dependable prom limo service in San Francisco, you can achieve this goal. A graduation or prom night is an important occasion for any youngster and as a...

  • High School Graduation

The Negative Preconceptions Surrounding the Prom Night

Prom is like the Met Gala of highschool, it is your exit from highschool and it is customary to look damn good on your way out. I remember when I was a sophomore, a girl in my grade was going to prom with her cousin...

The Search for a Suitable Limo for a Prom Night

For youngsters, prom is an extremely uncommon night, and thus, everything should keep running as easily as would be prudent. So for the individuals who choose to contract a prom limousine benefit, there are a few things that ought to be done before calling and...

Relevance of Changes in Canadian Employment Law

Introduction A career is significant for each individual because of numerous advantages. A decent and stable career, for example, gives stability and genuine feelings of serenity throughout everyday life. Being guaranteed a stable income flow, we are spared a lot of stress and uncertainties that...

  • Employment Law

Steven Spielberg Commencement Speech in Harvard University

Harvard University graduation, students, parents, family, faculty and friends anticipated the big speech by the famous film director, produce and screenwriter, Steven Spielberg. As he kicked off his commencement speech, he began with his Universal Studios dream job he was offered his sophomore year telling...

  • Steven Spielberg

How Well Do High Schools Prepare Teens for Life after Graduation

I knew that high schools did not teach teens how to do any checks, bills, etc. To begin with, did school teach you how to do any of those before you graduated? Schools do not get teens ready for the life of adulthood. I choose...

  • High School

Looking Back at the Many Years of a School Life

High School takes up 720 days of our lives. 720 days of sitting at desks with people you probably won’t talk to outside of class. 720 days of waking up early with the intention of actually getting ready but then hitting the snooze button so...

My Highschool Reflections Before Graduation

Many people would tell us that our high school years “are the best years of our lives”. How when we walk across the stage in June, nothing would ever be the same, for the better or for the worst. As a graduating senior, I thought...

Graduation as a Transitional Experience and a Rite of Passage

Throughout life, human beings often experience shifts and changes in their identity and their surrounding environment. Whether they are religious or secular, they are still transitional moments in one's life that are celebrated by rituals that take us to the next step in our lives...

Improving Graduation Rates by Revamping Community College

Community college has always been a misunderstood topic. It is clear to say few people feel encouraged to go to a community college over going to a university. One thing that is clear about community college is the lack of guidance for students that did...

The Reasons Of Graduates Unemployment

In this contemporary world, mostly everyone is studying tertiary education. It has been a compulsory element to get a job and to be considered successful in the eye of the world. But being jobless or unemployed is also becoming very communal among graduates. Consistently, more...

  • Unemployment

The Reasons I Choose To Pursue A Graduate Degree In Forensic Science

I have always been an inquisitive person with ongoing questions about the how and the why of the world. Science, easily, became my favorite subject because I was able to discover answers that sustained my insatiable appetite for knowledge. An early fascination with the “CSI”...

  • Forensic Science

Best topics on Graduation

1. How a Graduate Degree Can Help You Achieve Your Career Goals

2. Career Goals After Graduation: Mapping the Journey

3. Advantages and Disadvantages of a Gap Year: Exploring Paths of Exploration and Reflection

4. My Convocation Day: An Experience I Will Never Forget

5. What I Want To Do After My Graduation

6. A College Degree: The Next Step or a Mere Stepping Stone

7. Prom Night and Prom Limo Rentals as Integral Parts of Graduation

8. The Negative Preconceptions Surrounding the Prom Night

9. The Search for a Suitable Limo for a Prom Night

10. Relevance of Changes in Canadian Employment Law

11. Steven Spielberg Commencement Speech in Harvard University

12. How Well Do High Schools Prepare Teens for Life after Graduation

13. Looking Back at the Many Years of a School Life

14. My Highschool Reflections Before Graduation

15. Graduation as a Transitional Experience and a Rite of Passage

  • Importance of Education
  • School Uniform
  • Learning Styles
  • Academic Freedom
  • Early Childhood Education

Need writing help?

You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need

*No hidden charges

100% Unique Essays

Absolutely Confidential

Money Back Guarantee

By clicking “Send Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails

You can also get a UNIQUE essay on this or any other topic

Thank you! We’ll contact you as soon as possible.

Home › Inspirational Graduation Speeches

Inspirational Graduation Speeches

Inspirational Graduation Speeches

Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. See our disclosure for more info.

Do you have a graduating son or daughter? A high school or college graduation is a major milestone in life that should not be ignored. The graduation ceremony celebrates hard work and encourages students to move into the world to achieve great things. This hopeful message is further cemented through an inspirational graduation speech.

As you celebrate graduation day and wish your student good luck, consider the following commencement advice you can share as well as inspirational quotes for a happy graduation.

Here are the best graduation speeches and inspirational message graduation quotes to inspire you and change your life.

Page Contents

1. Barack Obama – Howard University, 2016

YouTube video

You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. I’ll repeat that. I want you to have passion, but you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness but action. Not just hashtags, but votes. Barack Obama

During his graduation message, Barack Obama spoke with hope. He urged the graduating students to be hardworking yet pragmatic as they sought justice, equality, and freedom. Howard University is one of the nation’s most distinguished and historically Black universities.

In 2020, Barack Obama also shared a graduation message to the Class of 2020 as part of Graduate Together: America Honors the High School Class of 2020 . These students had to learn to overcome obstacles and challenges that classes before them had not had to deal with due to the pandemic.

The disappointments of missing a live graduation, those will pass pretty quick…What remains true is that your graduation marks your passage into adulthood—the time when you begin to take charge of your own life. It’s when you get to decide what’s important to you: the kind of career you want to pursue. Who you want to build a family with. The values you want to live by. And given the current state of the world, that may be kind of scary. Barack Obama

Obama goes on to offer hope and support as graduating students set out to navigate a very new landscape and shape a new world.

2. David Foster Wallace – Kenyon Graduation Speech, 2005

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually, one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water? David Foster Wallace

In this commencement address, Wallace reminds us that we often forget, or take for granted, the most obvious things around us. He acknowledges it’s difficult to stay aware of what’s happening in the world, especially when you’re too busy dealing with the monologue inside your head.

That’s what a college education is about, according to him. It’s learning how to think and exercising some degree of control over your thoughts so you can choose what to pay attention to.

Our thoughts affect our realities, and the ability to choose how you “construct meaning from experience” will determine the lenses from which you see the world and how you react in return.

3. Natalie Portman – Harvard Graduation Speech 2015

YouTube video

Sometimes your insecurities and your inexperience may lead you, too, to embrace other people’s expectations, standards, or values. But you can harness that inexperience to carve out your own path, one that is free of the burden of knowing how things are supposed to be, a path that is defined by its own particular set of reasons . Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman majored in psychology at Harvard University because she believed it would help her acting. She graduated in 2003. In her commencement speech at the 2015 graduation ceremony, she spoke of her own self-doubt and gave an inspiring, funny , and wisdom-filled speech for the graduating class.

Portman said even though she was a successful student and went on to find success as an actress, she still struggled with her own worth but eventually learned to set her own goals.

4. Ellen DeGeneres – Tulane University, 2009

YouTube video

Never follow anyone else’s path, unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path and by all means you should follow that. Don’t give advice, it will come back and bite you in the ass. Don’t take anyone’s advice. So my advice to you is to be true to yourself and everything will be fine. Ellen Degeneres

This is one of the funniest graduation speeches ever! All humor aside, this speech shows why  it’s better to be true to yourself instead of trying desperately to be a second-rate version of someone else.

For years, Ellen thought being bisexual might prevent her from being a successful stand-up comedian, but it’s just not the case. Ellen proved that you could be successful, whoever you are, if you worked hard and learned from your past experiences— even one as sad as the death of a loved one.

5. Charlie Munger – University of California Law School, 2007

YouTube video

*Skip to 4:08 for the actual speech

You’re not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You’re going to advance in life by what you’re going to learn after you leave here. Charlie Munger

Education doesn’t stop after you graduate from college. It doesn’t stop after you finish your MBA or PhD either. Munger says, “Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It’s not just something you do to advance in life.”

It’s a moral duty because it’s only through continuous learning that we can add to the vast knowledge of man kind. If we stopped learning, progress in all industries—computers, finance, engineering, biology, stops as well.

6. Michelle Obama – Eastern Kentucky University, 2013

YouTube video

If you’re a Democrat, spend some time talking to a Republican. And if you’re a Republican, have a chat with a Democrat. Maybe you’ll find some common ground, maybe you won’t. But if you honestly engage with an open mind and an open heart, I guarantee you’ll learn something. And goodness knows we need more of that, because we know what happens when we only talk to people who think like we do — we just get more stuck in our ways, more divided, and it gets harder to come together for a common purpose. Michelle Obama

As far as inspirational speeches go, Michelle Obama’s speech is very actionable. Her advice is simple (not easy), talk to each other with an open mind.

Different religion, race, political stand, it doesn’t matter. We can all learn from one another.

7. Jim Carrey – Maharashi University of Management, 2014

YouTube video

This is one of my favorite motivational speeches because Jim Carrey is such a good example of his message.

So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an account. Jim Carrey

Carrey’s father lost his accounting job when he was 12, and it was then he realized that failure is inevitable , whether you’re doing what you want or not. If that’s the case, you might as well take a stab at doing something you love.

8. J.K Rowling – Harvard Commencement Address, 2008

YouTube video

I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. J.K. Rowling

This is probably one of the most inspirational videos for writers and creatives everywhere.

Rowling was suffering from depression when he wrote the Harry Potter books. But through grit and patience with herself, she was able to complete the first Harry Potter Manuscript and, stay motivated to continue even when feeling down. Thanks to her drive and imagination, the world has Harry Potter !

9. Bono – University of Pennsylvania, 2004

YouTube video

In case you don’t know him, Bono is the lead singer of the famous band U2. Of course, being the rock star he is, he leads his speech by saying, “My name is Bono, and I am a rock star.”

In his speech, he urges graduates to carefully consider their big idea, in saying:

What are you willing to spend your moral capital, your intellectual capital, your cash, (and) your sweat equity in pursuing outside of the walls of the University of Pennsylvania? The world is more malleable than you think, and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape. Bono

Being a rock star, I thought Bono would talk about the perils of fame, the road to stardom or something to that effect. But instead, he talked about big ideas and changing the world.

10. Amy Poehler – Harvard University, 2011

YouTube video

Life is like a heist that requires good drivers, an explosives expert, a hot girl who doubles as a master of disguise, and this is a hard and fast rule. If the Rock shows up, they’re on to you . Amy Poehler

During her commencement speech at Harvard University in 2011, Amy Poehler expressed her surprise at the invitation to do so. She delivered a speech with jokes, advice, and insight as she looked out at the graduates.

She told them to head out into the world with love, light, joy, and laughter. Finishing off her speech in true Amy Poehler fashion, she also says, “please don’t forget to tip your waitresses.”

11. Meryl Streep – Barnard College, 2010

YouTube video

This is your time, and it feels normal to you, but really there is no normal. There’s only change, and resistance to it and then more change . Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep is an actress most famous for Sophie’s Choice , The Devil Wears Prada , and Mamma Mia . She was asked to deliver the commencement speech to Barnard College in 2010. Her speech was dripping with extreme personality, honesty, and bluntness.

Streep shared her own personal stories and emphasized the importance of empathy. The audience was all women, so the speech was directed at them, but she shared many graduation messages that applied to everyone.

12. Kerry Washington – George Washington University, 2013

YouTube video

You and you alone are the only person who can live the life that writes the story you were meant to tell . Kerry Washington

Kerry Washington is an actress, producer, and director. In 2018, she was named the eighth highest-paid television actress and has won several awards, including the President’s Award.

In her commencement speech at George Washington University in 2013, she urged graduates to go beyond their comfort zones and live their own stories.

How to Create Your Own Inspirational Graduation Speech

Do you need to write your own inspirational speech or curate the perfect graduation message? Here are a few tips on how to do just that, so you can inspire others like the commencement speeches above.

Start With a Quote

Start with a relevant quote. This sets the overall tone of your speech and grabs your audience’s attention. A good example of this is a quote by David Brinkley, “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”

Provide Scenarios

Now that you have drawn in the audience, present a what-if scenario to encourage the audience to continue following your thought process.

You can also provide a scenario encouraging the audience to put themselves directly into it. Suggest that they imagine doing something and ask what they would do if it doesn’t go as planned.

If you are giving a graduation message, ask where they see themselves years down the road or what they picture success as. You can then offer advice and insight based on your own experience.

Ask Questions

You should also ask questions, whether they are literal or rhetorical. When you present a question to someone, the person intuitively answers it, keeping them engaged with what you have to say.

Pause for Silence

When giving an inspirational speech, it also helps to pause for a few seconds after important points. This pause allows the audience to react to what you have to say and settle down before you continue with your next statement. The pause is also a good way to draw attention to what you want to say.

What Makes an Inspirational Graduation Speech?

The best graduation speech should have a very uplifting message that leads with education and wisdom. The graduation speech should focus on the graduates’ achievements and accomplishments. It should highlight the sacrifices that may have been made.

When writing a graduation or inspirational speech, ensure a strong theme or message is conveyed to keep your audience’s focus and attention.

Do you remember the speaker on your graduation day? What pearls of wisdom did he or she share?

Related Reading : Don’t forget what you worked so hard on in school! Check out our 150 Education Quotes for Teachers and Students , too. These gems are good for any graduation card when offering congratulations.

Photo of author

Natalie Seale

3 thoughts on “Inspirational Graduation Speeches”

Am really inspired by these brief messages,indeed education has no boundary; therefore, I say to you,” education is immeasurable, regardless of what disciplines or background we find ourselves.

These are very inspiring. My favorite is from J.K. Rowling. Thanks for sharing

Actually Very Inspiring ……thanks for sharing

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Yale Daily News

Instagram icon

PERSONAL ESSAY: On Graduating in a Pandemic

Contributing Reporter

essay on graduation

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1005512596?secret_token=s-wFHMjlG8La5″ params=”color=#ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”300″ iframe=”true” /]

Four years ago, I entered Yale as part of the class of 2021, and now the year I both dreaded and anticipated is here. It’s 2021; my senior spring. What I imagined would be a victory lap after three and a half of the best years of my life looks a lot more like a slog to an ever-moving finish line. Almost every part of my imagined college experience has changed, and these changes due to COVID — multiplied over the thousands of seniors graduating this year and last — produce an impact that we will feel for years to come.

My former suitemates, whom I’ve spent many nights with imagining the future, are now in different cities across the U.S. When I first came to Yale, my idealized college experience was centered around our suite unit; I imagined that we would weather four years of Yale, then enter the rest of the world together. Instead, only three out of my six suitemates from sophomore year are still graduating in 2021, and all of us are headed to very different futures than we had imagined. What remains of our graduating class resembles my ex-suite: altered plans and changed people, staggering in unexpected new directions. 

I called those of my former suitemates who are still graduating — pseudonymized here as Paris, Maia and Luisa — and we discussed where we might be in the next couple years. The following are imagined futures loosely based upon these conversations.

In 2024, PARIS lives in a sun-soaked 15th-story apartment, the fourth or fifth she’s lived in since graduating, with a windowsill full of plants: philodendrons, African violets, basil, a Venus flytrap. Her dark hair is now short, shorter than it’s been since college, and her apartment-mates are what she would describe as “boss ladies.” Her phone beeps with a text from one of the teenage girls that she works with at her job as a community organizer; the sound wakes up her pitbull, who lazily flaps an ear and curls back up against the back of her desk chair.

It will be three years since Paris left New Haven and fled to new cities to escape a suffocating senior year spent in quarantine. Feeling that COVID catapulted her prematurely into adulthood, Paris ran in the opposite direction of a stable “adult” job. After graduating, she spent time backpacking in South America, teaching in Spain and organizing in Philadelphia. She went wherever there was movement and action and young people. The wanderer lifestyle she chose was in direct reaction to the sensation of being stuck.

Paris has switched therapists several times over the course of the three years because she always felt like progress wasn’t being made in sessions. Somehow, the pandemic never quite leaves the conversation. Her wanderlust and rejection of normal, “age-appropriate” behavior feels like the continuation of senior year: no demarcation between one chapter ending and another beginning; continual limbo. Her near-excessive accumulation of plants, pets, books, artwork, things , according to her newest therapist, Alicia, represents the anchors that Paris uses to prevent herself from floating away entirely. And her retreat from many of the friends she had made in college, Alicia tells her, may be the response to having grown disconnected from the emotional states of others — she feels alone, and has come to believe that she is alone in feeling alone. Everyone else is a monolith of unrelatable, happy people and she quickly falls away from them, feeling like there is little mutual ground for conversation left.

In 2023, MAIA has joined the consulting company that she has worked for since sophomore summer. She still keeps in touch with a handful of people from college, but she spends most of her time texting her cohort at work about the ever-changing demands of their entertainment industry clientele. Maia recently started seeing someone, but she realizes she doesn’t have a lot of patience for things like nights out. She occasionally does productions with a local theater group, but even that feels like work sometimes.

Graduation had been dampened by so many other competing demands. What once was celebratory and important, had become decidedly… not. Maia rationalized to herself that graduation mattered so little in the context of people losing their loved ones to a raging virus; she had herself so thoroughly convinced that by the time the virtual event came and went, it had long been classified as a forgettable memory. Pomp and circumstance, the commemoration of accomplishment — all foreign concepts. Change was dulled; the anticlimactic feeling of leaving college and starting work was further reinforced by having already spent six months at home, unable to see friends, with the only noticeable change in her day-to-day being a Zoom link with a corporate header instead of a Yale one. 

Now a full-fledged member of the workforce, Maia finds that there was no celebration there either. At a company that had once mailed their prospective employees cupcakes to woo them into signing, Maia has not yet tasted a single company-sponsored dessert nor attended a cheese-tasting event. There is no more wining and dining, much less company-sponsored recreation, and even a reduction in company merch. She tells herself, logically, they know you won’t reject a job during COVID, and they are right. And who am I to complain when others are unemployed? The work we do is the most important thing, anyway, she tells herself. The days of after-show parties and spontaneous happy hours are long gone.

Instead of fun with friends, the pleasures of life look a lot more like solitude at home. Since senior year, Maia has begun to enjoy the growth she notices in herself. She has learned more about how to be an adult — cooking recipes, paying rent, being able to decide when to start working and when to stop (the stopping is still hard sometimes). She feels gratitude for the friends that she still talks to from   time to time, and for the ordinary things like warm showers and cold drinks. She is getting better at being alone.

In 2022, LUISA, with her plaid backpack and teal Yeti rambler (the same one from sophomore year of Yale), is back to the books, spending most of her time exactly where she had planned for senior year: in libraries and coffee shops. The backdrop has changed, but the rhythms of academia remain a wonderful constant. She misses stability so much that her craving for certainty makes her return to school. The master’s degree wasn’t part of the plan, but neither was this virus, and school feels like the closest thing to normal, even if everything has to be from a laptop.

Luisa is impressed with herself for how well she deals with unmet expectations. Friendships were permanently fractured because of the distance created by the pandemic, and past Luisa would have been torn up every night. Instead, she feels a sense of emptiness where there once lived feelings like attachment. “ Maybe if we had been sophomores, the gaps would have slowly been closed again over time , but because of the lasting impression of people in masks keeping distance, dwindingly friendships a year out seem only natural,” she writes in her brand-new Moleskine — teal, like the rambler. The premature separation from her classmates by geographical location, by gap-year “1.5” graduating class divisions, by on- and off-campus, sucks. Luisa feels like they had been rushed into the next phase of their lives before even making it to the climax of the current one. All the more reason, she thinks, to tether herself to some semblance of normalcy: Her weekly course calendar is something she can rely on.

It’s 2021 and I sit in my off-campus apartment, daydreaming about the future and wondering where this spring season will take us. I stare outside the window, wondering when I’ll finally be free from this longing feeling for a chance to gather with my ex-suitemates, to be free of hypervigilance about safety and cleanliness, to just have a sleepover or meet a new friend without worry. I think about my plans to stay in the city next year, and about all the missed potential from an ideal senior year.

The only thing I appreciate is this: Right before we got sent home, I was hurtling toward disaster, going 100 miles per minute into the future, and COVID forced me to slow down. I was forced to recognize the beauty in the slow. Graduation has historically been all about projecting into the future — anticipating what’s to come, cherishing the bright spots within these precious college years, formation and self-discovery in an ever-accelerating landscape. Pandemic graduation seems to be about having the brakes thrown into our plans, and being forced to sit still and alone for a very long time. 

Every year, college grads bid goodbye to their family away from home. The difference, this year and the last, is that we did not see our goodbyes coming. Who knew that the last time we’d see Jimmy from Davenport was that final Friday in “Game Theory,” or that we should have hugged Collin from FOOT goodbye when we passed him on the street? Our plans changed; the people in our lives changed. Some of us who thought we would stay in New Haven exited this pandemic deciding it was time to go; and others who entered thinking it was a get-the-degree and get-out situation, found themselves wanting to stay just one more year in New Haven. One more normal year. Disparities and distance grew between the employed and the still-searching; our support systems, the ones that should have been solidified during these past four years, are flimsy at best as we get shuttled into the rest of our adult lives. And yet we persist. We try to bring back the dinners, the movie nights. We make plans once again. We gather as a suite on Zoom and dream out loud about the people we’ll meet, the things we’ll do and the places we’ll go once we graduate into this pandemic and out into the rest of the world. Each of us four departing seniors head in different directions, none of us knowing exactly where we will land. All we have to fuel us onward are some precious memories of the good old days, and faith that we are resilient enough to get through graduating, even in a pandemic.

essay on graduation

Kalina Mladenova

Home / Essay Samples / Education / Higher Education / Graduation

Graduation Essay Examples

My plans after graduation: pursuing a career in education.

After graduation, many people have various plans for their future. Some may pursue higher education in their field of study, while others may take a gap year to travel or gain work experience. Some individuals may also seek employment immediately or pursue entrepreneurship. Regardless of...

Graduating High School: a Milestone of Achievement

As I stood on the threshold of my high school graduation, a whirlwind of emotions swept over me. The journey that had spanned four years was culminating in a single, pivotal moment. The familiar halls that had witnessed countless lessons, friendships, challenges, and triumphs were...

Graduation: What to Do in Trade School after Graduation

After graduating from highschool, young adults have an immense amount of opportunities from college, to sports, and heading straight into the workforce. However, there is one other major option that constantly gets overlooked. That option is trade school. In this graduation essay the concept and...

What Are My Plans after Graduation

At the end of my high school junior year, I resolved myself to select the Informatics and Digital Sciences branch, which can also be denoted by its acronym IDS, in addition to the other academic subjects for my senior year since I was willing, from...

When I Graduate from a High School: Reflections on Graduation

To start with, this is one of the "When I graduate from high school essays" as I have just ended my study and there were lots of confused feelings about this experience that I want to share. As I walked across the stage to receive...

My College Graduation Speech

Fellow seniors, family, faculty, and all Kingsway students, as I was getting ready this morning, it hit me that today is the day. Today is the day I will walk across this stage with the class of 2018, and finally receive my diploma. I have...

Why I Choose Environmental Biology Graduate Program

Earth has always intrigued me; how can a place be resourceful and destructive at the same time? I fascinated the connection between living organisms and various phenomenal which turn out to be pieces of the same puzzle. Yet, studying environmental science has a new purpose:...

The Day of My Graduation

“This morning as we find ourselves as seniors on the verge of graduation, I ask all of you to think back to August 2014 when we were freshmen,” I said in front of my class of 2018. Graduation was a significant moment in my life....

Examination of Possible Difficulties of Post-graduating Period

Although graduation is a big joy, it is also a harbinger of entering a new phase fraught with difficulties for the wide-ranging changes in the life of the graduate. These changes begin with the absence of vocabulary such as (hall, lecturer and homework) from the...

Why College Education is Important

“Education is our passport to the future for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepares for it today.” College education has become very important in every individual’s life as it provides higher level of knowledge, confidence, academic, technical and social skills required for a successful...

Trying to find an excellent essay sample but no results?

Don’t waste your time and get a professional writer to help!

You may also like

  • Standardized Testing
  • Elementary School
  • Scholarship Essays
  • After Graduation Essays
  • Brittany Stinson Essays
  • Teacher Essays
  • Indian Education Essays
  • Studying Abroad Essays
  • Online Classes Essays
  • School Uniform Essays
  • Service Learning Essays
  • School Ranking Essays

samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->