Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.
Hey English learners.
This is Connor and you're listening to episode 248 of the Listening Time podcast.
I hope you're motivated to practice your English today and to practice your comprehension with another episode.
So in today's episode, I'm going to talk about graduation.
I'm going to talk specifically about the different graduations that I had growing up, when I graduated from elementary school, from middle school, from high school and from college.
I thought it would be fun to talk about this and remember, reminisce a little bit.
When you reminisce, this means that you Think back on past memories and laugh or remember fun things or whatever.
You're remembering things from the past in a positive way.
So I thought it would be fun to reminisce a little bit and I'll talk about these different graduations and what it was like, what my feelings were.
So I'm sure you'll be interested in hearing about this.
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And make sure to check out my US Conversations podcast.
I recorded an interesting episode recently and I'm going to record another one with another new teacher in about a week, which I'm excited about.
I talked to different English teachers from all over the country in that podcast.
It's a lot of fun and it's a great way to learn about the US, practice your listening and, of course, you can find a teacher among those teachers that I talk to.
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Okay, let me talk about my different graduations from different time periods, different levels of school.
Let me talk first about my elementary school graduation.
To be honest, I don't really remember the ceremony.
I remember the day of my graduation, and I remember where the ceremony was.
I remember that it was inside the auditorium building, but I just can't really remember the details of it.
But I remember that afterwards we went our class with our parents to an Italian restaurant to eat together after school, that graduation ceremony, and that was fun.
It was great to talk to the other students about finishing elementary school and, like i said, i don't really remember the ceremony, but i remember my feelings, I remember my thoughts.
I knew things were about to change a lot, because in the US the change from elementary school to middle school is pretty drastic.
Because when you're in elementary school, you're still a kid.
You can still do kid things.
There isn't the same pressure when it comes to your social life that there is now in middle school.
And not just that, but the structure of the school is very different.
In middle school you have many different classes with different teachers, and there are a lot of new students from other schools who you've never met before.
So I knew all of this and I knew it was going to be a transition, a big change really.
And so I remember feeling those butterflies in my stomach, as we say, like when you feel nervous, sometimes in a good way.
You feel those nerves in your stomach.
We say that you have butterflies.
So I remember that and I remember looking forward to the next chapter in my life and I didn't know exactly what to expect, but it just felt like things were going to change a lot.
And they did.
Middle school was very different for me.
So how about my middle school graduation?
I actually do remember my middle school graduation.
Not all the details. but I remember the ceremony.
It was an official ceremony.
It was very official.
We had the gowns, we call them, like what you wear when you graduate.
We had those gowns.
We did the ceremony at the college football stadium.
That was actually just down the street and there were a lot of people and parents there and it was kind of like a high school graduation, but just a little bit shorter in length, I think, and we didn't have all the same things.
But I remember that they had these awards that they gave to different students.
And one of the awards was the Perfect Attendance Award, meaning you never missed a day of school.
And I was one of the few students that received this award.
They called out our names and I don't think that I knew that I was going to receive this recognition.
I think it was a surprise to me.
But they called out just a few names, and I was one of the names.
And I remember feeling really embarrassed.
I think I've talked before about how middle school was just not the best time in my life and I had a ton of social awkwardness and anxiety and i was always embarrassed to be a really good student.
I know that this sounds crazy to most of you probably, But I would always feel embarrassed to stand out as like a good student.
I didn't want people to make fun of me for being this good student, being a nerd or whatever.
And again, most of you are probably thinking that I'm crazy, but people thought it was cool when people were not this great student.
They were more of a troublemaker.
Like in middle school.
For some reason, the troublemakers are the popular kids, who people like, and And the really good students are often not the most socially accepted and popular kids.
It's not always like this, but in my mind, that's what I thought.
And so I didn't want to stand out as this good student.
And so I was embarrassed at that graduation ceremony when they called out my name, because it was a little embarrassing for me that I was so good that I never missed a day of school.
I didn't want that reputation of being a really nerdy, good student.
Now I know that I was being ridiculous, but At that time I was 13 years old and I didn't know better.
So that is the number one memory I have from that graduation ceremony.
That's what I remember the most.
I also remember looking forward to high school because middle school was not fun for me.
It was not a great time in my life.
I was really looking forward to having a new start with new opportunities, new friends maybe.
And my sister was still gonna be in her last year of high school and And my neighbor was also going to be in his last year of high school when I started my first year.
So we were going to be at the same school.
And my neighbor was one of my best friends at that time.
And so I knew that I had some more connections with.
I knew that some of the older students were already going to know me.
And so I thought that I was going to have more social opportunities in high school and I did.
My first year of high school ended up being way better than my years in middle school.
I had a lot more friends.
This was probably my peak, my high point socially, just talking about my different years of school.
My first year of high school was really good socially.
So I was right to look forward to the next step because like I said, middle school was not good.
How about my high school graduation?
Well, before I talk about that, I want to give a little note.
In the US at least.
When I was in high school, the students had to do a certain number of hours of volunteer work in order to participate in the graduation ceremony.
And I remember that my friends and I did not have enough hours of volunteer work and there were only a few months left before graduation.
So I remember scrambling to try to find a way to get more volunteer hours.
When you scramble to do something, it means like you try to act really quickly and do whatever you can to solve something in a really short amount of time or whatever.
So my friends and I had to scramble to get enough volunteer hours, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to take part in the graduation ceremony.
But thankfully we did.
But I just wanted to mention that because that's one of the memories I have of related to that graduation and my high school graduation ceremony felt very important.
This was the graduation that felt the most important to me.
It was the most emotional.
I remember they played some different songs that kind of got us emotional.
There were different awards that were given.
And in high school in the US there's always a valedictorian, who is the person who had the highest education gpa grade point average in the school, and then the salutatorian, who was the second place, the person who had the second highest gpa.
So i remember our valedictorian giving a speech and the salutatorian gave a speech as well.
There were a lot of pictures taken because after the ceremony everyone wanted to take pictures with all of their different friends and save those memories right.
And there were a lot of goodbyes.
Not everyone was just saying goodbye forever to their friends, because They continued to hang out with their friends.
But I remember saying goodbye to some people, some teachers.
It was an emotional time and it felt really different from the other ceremonies, the other graduations that I had.
It was the most momentous, the most important one in my life.
It felt very serious because I felt like this was the biggest turning point in my life, meaning After this, things were going to be completely different.
I was going to be an adult and I was going to start the rest of my life.
I was extremely excited, but also very anxious and nervous during this time.
And I did not have the best senior year of high school.
Your senior year refers to your life. last year of high school.
I did not have the best senior year.
I had kind of distanced myself from many of the friends that I had before and I just did not have a good year socially.
I really wanted to be done And I had kind of a bad attitude during that year because I really wanted to make a name for myself, meaning I wanted people to see me succeed and have all of this success.
And part of the reason was because I wasn't comfortable with myself socially and I had never had a girlfriend.
I just felt really uncomfortable in my own skin, as we say.
And I wanted to succeed and show everyone that, that I was this talented or smart or creative person or whatever,
But again, not all of my reasons were good.
And I wanted to go off the beaten path, as we say, like take a different route that most people don't take.
I wanted to be this filmmaker, make films.
That's why I went to film school.
And I wanted to have success and success. show everyone from my high school, my success.
And again, a lot of that came from the fact that I just wasn't comfortable socially.
I had no self-confidence.
It just wasn't high point in my life.
I started high school with more success socially, it was a lot better, but when I ended high school, it was the opposite, And so, because I wanted to make a name for myself and have success, I was really looking forward to high school being over and just moving on going to film school being successful.
So I was happy that high school was over, but I would say that I was also sad, because I knew that my life was gonna change completely.
I was moving into unknown territory.
I was never gonna be a kid again.
And I was really nervous.
But I was excited.
And when I think back to that moment I get nostalgic now when I think back to the excitement that I had because I knew I was going to become an adult and have these different opportunities and I was going to choose my own path in life.
It's a very momentous time in someone's life.
And thinking back on it now, I wish I could relive that moment.
I get really nostalgic about it.
I would like to feel that excitement again, that nervous excitement about finishing high school and entering adulthood.
I don't think I'll ever have a moment like that again.
I'm a fully grown adult now.
I have a wife and kids.
There probably won't be another moment like that in my life, Like the way I felt graduating from high school And many of you already know this.
But after high school, I did indeed go to film school, but I dropped out.
I did not finish.
I had to find a new path.
I ended up just going to college like most of the rest of my friends afterwards.
And so things didn't work out the way I had hoped or planned, but still, I'll always remember that excitement when I graduated from high school.
Lastly, let me talk about my college graduation.
Eventually, after I dropped out of film school, I went to college.
I studied English and I didn't really like college.
It felt kind of like a waste, to be honest, because I had to learn a lot of things that weren't relevant to me.
And I had to take classes that were not gonna help me at all in my career.
And I already knew that I wanted to teach English, so it felt like I was wasting a lot of my time in these different classes that had nothing to do with teaching English.
So I did not have the best experience in terms of the classes.
I did well, I got good grades, but I felt like I was wasting my time a little bit.
And I didn't have many friends either.
You can hear the common theme throughout this episode that I didn't do really well socially in a lot of my different school experiences.
I did not have a lot of friends in college.
I had some and I had fun with them, but I was just ready to be done with college and with school in general.
I knew that this was going to be the last time that I would be a student in a traditional school like this.
So I was just looking forward to being done, not only because I didn't really enjoy my college program, but also because I knew what awaited me.
I knew what I was going to do afterwards and I just really wanted to do it.
I knew that I was going to get married just a few weeks after graduating.
I knew I was going to move to Mexico and teach English and that was the life I chose.
And so it was very different from my high school graduation, because my high school graduation was filled with this emotion and the nerves of not knowing anything, exactly what awaited me.
I was becoming an adult.
My college graduation was different because I knew what I was going to do afterwards.
I just wanted to Get done with college and go do it.
And so that was different.
The ceremony was okay.
It wasn't as emotional as the high school graduation ceremony.
I remember that I received the distinction of Magna Cum Laude, I think it's pronounced.
In the US we have these Latin honors for college graduates.
Depending on how well they do in In their classes, they might be honored with a different color tassel, which is this little string that hangs off of your graduation hat.
So I had a different color from a lot of the other students because I did really well in school.
At that point I didn't care so much about being recognized for my academic achievements, not like in middle school, where I was embarrassed.
Obviously, by that time in college I was an adult and I was just happy to have performed well in my classes.
I remember that my parents came up to watch that ceremony.
I went to school in another state so they had to fly to go attend my ceremony and that was nice.
And like I said, it wasn't super emotional and I already knew what I was going to do.
So it just felt like a big relief that I was finally done with school.
I wasn't going to need to do another year of school or another program.
So it was good.
I was happy at that ceremony.
And I was ready to start my life in Mexico, which I did.
And I lived there for six years.
And now I'm in the US.
And of course, life keeps changing.
But what I had imagined during that college ceremony, what I had imagined about my, my future, it actually came true, for the most part because I got married, I moved to Mexico, I taught English, so I did what I thought I was gonna do.
But I never thought I was gonna be this educational content creator like I am now creating English content for listeners all over the world.
So this was not what I had imagined, but I'm happy that I do this now and I can look back at the different school experiences I had, the different graduations.
And I can smile now and I can see how each thing led me one step closer to my present career and my life situation.
So I hope that you enjoyed this episode.
Remember that if you want to practice with real English spoken fast, make sure to sign up for my advanced episodes.
That link is down below.
And if you want an English teacher, check out my U.S.
Conversations podcast and you can get to know a lot of really cool teachers from around the country.
And if you like one of them, you can take a class with them.
That link is also down below.
All right.
Thank you all for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of listening time.
