Austin Scholar #118: My Alpha High graduation speech
& what I've been up to...
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
My Alpha High graduation speech
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been up to…
The first week as an official high school graduate was both freeing and sad. Freeing in the sense that there are no more requirements or assignments due, but sad because the Alpha chapter of my life has closed.
I have such a tempest of emotions – waves of joy and excitement and anxiety and sadness, all ebbing and flowing with each moment. And now that school is out, I’m going to be spending every moment possible with my sister before I have to leave.
Summer has fully kicked into gear and I’ve spent a lot of time reading at BookPeople and watching old seasons of Survivor. Definitely enjoying life right now :)
My Alpha High graduation speech
My friend Grace (@travelingenes on X) and I were asked by the head of Alpha High to write a short graduation speech. He asked us to talk about our experiences in high school, and I thought it would be really cool to put it out in the world for y’all to read.
I think it captures the essence of my journey – the victories, the tears, and the laughs.
I hope you enjoy it <3
Welcome everyone! Let's give a huge round of applause to our incredible seniors for not only surviving but thriving through the wild ride that is Alpha. Let's be real, our success isn't exactly a testament to a perfectly planned-out system, but rather to our unbreakable spirit and ability to adapt to change.
And when we say change, we're talking about showing up to a new session [6-week block within the school year, for the uninitiated] with no idea how our day was going to look. When you go to a school with no teachers and only 2 hours for your core subjects, anything is possible. But that's part of the thrill.
Since the days when Alpha was run out of a garage, the hero’s journey has been an integral part of the Alpha culture. The journey of the class of 2024 is no different. Here is our story:
Every hero begins as a normal person in the ordinary world. For us, that was “traditional school.” Whether we were bored in class or just coasting along, each and every one of us had a desire to be a part of something a little different. And no one can argue that Alpha isn’t at least a little different.
So naturally, we were attracted to the unpredictability and chaos of Alpha. It was a call to adventure that every kid with big dreams fantasizes about. So: thank you to every student and parent in the audience who had the courage to answer the Alpha call. The greatest, scariest, caused-the-most-arguments-at-home-iest risk we've taken in our lives was choosing to come here.
Our first day at Alpha High was our first step into the unknown. We spent our days perfecting the art of looking busy when the guides were watching. It was the era of COVID, where masks were worn everywhere except on our faces, and the apps we used to learn were constantly changing.
The first trial of our journey was finding the value in independent learning, whether or not a guide was watching.
As we grew from freshmen to sophomores, we became a formidable bunch of argumentative high schoolers who could crush minute-to-win-it challenges and had a grand total of ZERO official high school credits. And therein lies one of our largest trials: just completing three apps per subject isn't impressive to anyone other than Alpha students. So we had to complete what seemed like thousands of Credit-by-Examinations from UT to actually get a credit on our high school transcript.