On the day of my high school graduation, everything was supposed to be perfect. Sure, we were about to march onto the crispy football turf and roast in our caps and gowns under the unforgiving June sun for two hours, but our friends and family were with us, and this was our last day as high school students.

Plus, I had even more to celebrate as my class’s salutatorian.

Despite the impressive nature of this achievement, being second place in academics, sports, or any situation is an uncomfortable feeling. People want to congratulate you and express their sympathy at the same time. They assume you harbor a vendetta against the top performer — in my case, the valedictorian.

I did notice eager eyes following me during the ceremony, perhaps expecting that I would trip my rival on the way to the podium. Alas, I did not seize that opportunity.

The top 3 students in my class had the honor of reading everyone’s names at graduation. At each rehearsal, we drilled over 400 names, writing phonetic pronunciations on our lists to ensure we would get them right.

“Practice the night before the ceremony,” our vice principal instructed us. “It’s important that you pronounce everyone’s names correctly.”

At that second, I realized that someone had to read my name at the ceremony, too. In fact, my announcer would probably have to recite my name twice: once before I gave my speech, and once when I received my diploma.

“Do you know who’s going to read my name?” I asked my vice principal.

“Me, actually,” she said.

“Okay, great! This is how to pronounce it.” I recited my full name slowly. She repeated it back.

“Got it,” she said.

The night before the ceremony, I did as I was told. I drilled every first, middle, and last name.

It was a hefty responsibility. Hundreds of parents would be filming me on their iPhones and cameras as I called their children to the podium, so I needed to be precise, lest I be remembered as the imbecile who mangled someone’s name and thwarted a sacred moment.

I also practiced my own speech, which included a quote from Peter Parker and a joke about the airport-level security protocol we had to follow to go to the bathroom at my high school.

Apart from that light jab, I showered my school in praise, extolling the teachers who had imparted their wisdom to us and celebrating our growth as students and citizens.

My school’s administration read the speech beforehand and approved it. In fact, I think they liked it a bit too much, because my principal’s speech contained a few phrases that echoed my own.

Graduation day arrived. We marched onto the field and sat in our preassigned foldable seats. Families fanned themselves with printed programs as they waited on the bleachers for someone to speak or at the very least, clear their throat at the microphone. A photographer snapped a picture of me beaming before a sea of sweaty and impatient faces.

As the proceedings began, I prepared myself to walk towards the podium. My vice principal announced that the salutatorian was going to give a speech.

Then she uttered someone’s name. It certainly wasn’t mine.

Cringing, I walked up and delivered my speech. I then recited my peers’ names at the podium, trying to forget my vice principal’s mistake.

When it was time to read my name a second time, she fumbled again, her pronunciation even more egregious this time.

Angry and probably delirious in the heat, I yelled the correct pronunciation of my name at my vice principal from my seat in the audience. Don’t worry; it sounded less like a tantrum and more like a desperate plea.

She did hear it, and she tried to repeat my name correctly. She never got it quite right.

And I never thought I’d be a heckler.

As a Broadway lover, I’d learned to keep my mouth shut during any performance. If someone whispered something to me in the middle of a show, I usually smiled and nodded, but I didn’t reply. My attention remained fixated on the actor out of respect for the time and energy they’d poured into their onstage persona.

This time, though, my vice principal’s hypocrisy turned me into the person I didn’t want to become. She’d reminded me multiple times to practice pronouncing other students’ names, but she didn’t bother to devote the same attention to my name.

In my mind, she was dismissing my 4 years of hard work at this school. She was telling me that I didn’t matter enough for her to acknowledge my identity.

Maybe I was being too melodramatic. Maybe my vice principal got stage fright and stumbled over her words.

Maybe she was having a rotten day after she spilled her caramel frappuccino all over her pantsuit and raced back home to fetch a new one. Maybe she was pondering the astronomical cost of dry cleaning nowadays as she was introducing me.

Regardless, she should have said my name the way it was meant to be said, whether it was graduation day or any ordinary school day.

Names aren’t just tags that differentiate us from the next person; they are stories about our personalities, our cultures, our journeys. They tell others how we would like to be known.

It’s a well-known tactic for powerful people to belittle others by shortening, warping, or erasing their names altogether. In doing so, those authority figures confiscate our autonomy.

They treat us like discarded sweaters in the lost and found bin: unidentifiable, interchangeable, unknown objects.

While I don’t think my vice principal sought to belittle me, her actions had that effect.

This incident happened 4 years ago. Since then, I’ve had college professors who’ve said on the first day of class, “Apologies if I butcher your name. I’ll try to correct myself, but I may still butcher it by the end of the semester.”

An actual butcher would treat brisket on the cutting board with more delicacy and deftness than the professors who flaunted their own carelessness in our faces.

I’m now a full-time professional. Due to my experience at my high school graduation, I make it even more of a priority to look my colleagues in the eye, repeat their names, and ensure that I pronounce them right consistently.

I hope that others will do the same for me.

Turning grief into glory makes a compelling story — and it’s not a new trend.

In 1939, Frida Kahlo imprinted her broken heart onto the canvas in her piece The Two Fridas while going through a divorce from her husband, artist Diego Rivera.

In the present day, Taylor Swift has achieved success with hit songs, including “All Too Well” and “I Knew You Were Trouble,” about her ruptured relationships.

These anecdotes suggest that pain, whether it stems from the end of a relationship, the death of a loved one, or any other loss, can be recycled into something more beautiful.

How to Deal with Grief (According to Society)

Society encourages people who are grieving to distract themselves from their hurt with a list of eclectic coping mechanisms.

Going through an illness? Grab a pottery wheel. Just got rejected from your dream school or job? Hit the gym. Feeling low about the end of a friendship? Kidnap some lambs from your nearest farm and find solace in their company instead.

In everyone’s frenzy to secure side hustles and a minimum of 10 income streams, there’s a new pressure to spend your mourning period on a potentially lucrative venture. Why waste your hours in bed with a tissue box when you could devote them to your new Etsy shop or burgeoning TikTok career?

My Experience

As a YouTuber myself, I know that content creation and entrepreneurship are pathways to self-actualization. Building a community or product can reignite the fire within you, giving you the motivation to upskill and innovate.

Taking all of these positive outcomes into account, I still don’t know if today’s commodification culture helps or hurts people during their healing process.

When you’re grieving, your oscillating emotions sometimes make it difficult to do even basic tasks. In the aftermath of my breakup last year, there were days when showering seemed like my most formidable obstacle.

I had to give myself permission to feel everything ranging from nausea and searing anger to loneliness and doubt during that period. Productivity was the last thing on my mind.

I found comfort in hobbies, such as playing piano, but if anyone had asked me to write a song about heartbreak, I might have hurled the keyboard out the window. As I’ve continued to heal, I’ve realized that grief doesn’t need to birth a masterpiece, money, or an outward display of completeness. While wonderful, these results often feed into our desire for external validation, giving others the power to influence our self-perception.

What Actually Helped Me Heal

I didn’t find inner peace by plunging into a new project. I reaffirmed my worth by writing, baking, walking, and visiting my favorite places with people I loved without any targets or deadlines hovering over my activities. If I had been worried about reaching a specific goal, I probably would have added a heaping tablespoon of stress to my recipe for self-growth.

I also derived strength from the knowledge that I was not alone. Loss, despite its ugly reputation, is beautiful in its universality.

My friends had a knack for reaching out to me when I needed their support the most. In hour-long phone calls and snacking sessions on the couch, they recounted their own breakups and fortified me with their wisdom. Their outpouring of compassion made me a better person because I now have the tools to support others undergoing a similar experience.

If you’re dealing with grief, know that recovery can manifest itself in many ways. You don’t need to write the Great American Novel, break any push-up records, or become a six-figure influencer to prove your mettle.

Even if your most recent milestone seems small, it’s a sign that these gray, wintry days are starting to morph into a vibrant spring.

High schoolers today are like walking vision boards. I was one of them before I entered college, which eroded some of my idealism. And like those high schoolers, I once sketched a plan for my future at the age of 15 because I felt that time was escaping me.

Why is this sense of urgency becoming more commonplace?

Because high schools are adopting the value proposition that colleges have touted for years.

Not only do high schools now offer advanced curriculums, but they also help students choose a career path and impart skills needed to enter the workforce.

Advanced Coursework

Advanced Placement (AP) classes, which can count for college credit, teach students subjects ranging from civics to computer science. In my own AP classes, I composed literary analysis essays, studied the American government’s system of checks and balances, and learned about object-oriented programming.

I also participated in experiences that enlivened the course material. Those included Socratic seminars, mock trials, lab experiments, and group coding projects.

My classes were fun, but the expectations placed upon us were often overwhelming. My teachers tried to craft the illusion that high school was akin to training wheels, saying,

“This won’t fly in college!”

Yet my high school classes were far more punitive — and assessment-heavy — than any of my college courses.

Granted, I’m currently studying business analytics, information technology, and marketing at my university. Those topics are not exactly as complex as neuroscience or aerospace engineering.

Nonetheless, my college experience became easier because my high school classes gave me the foundational knowledge that students typically would gain in college gen ed courses.

Experiential Learning Opportunities

Challenging coursework alone isn’t enough to set students apart from their peers, so they join clubs, volunteer, enter contests, and embark on personal projects to explore different paths until they settle upon a unique niche.

Moreover, high schoolers are seeking out internships to acquire new skills and try out different professions.

While these experiences are enriching, they’re attracting younger and younger students who become career-driven before they’ve reached the basic algebra unit in class. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw a sixth-grader interning at NASA.

Both high schools and colleges are more vocation-focused than ever.

In a 2016 survey, the Pew Research Center reported that 50% of the American public thought that college should prepare students for the workplace, whereas 35% believed that college should foster students’ personal and intellectual growth.

Over time, the conception of a traditional liberal arts education that feeds students’ curiosity has morphed into a model that prioritizes career development.

How does this impact Gen Z’s mental health?

This emphasis on future careers has crept into high schools, too, and it could be exacerbating Gen Z’s mental health crisis. A McKinsey survey showed that Gen Zers were almost twice as likely to report being “emotionally distressed” than millennials and Gen Xers.

The COVID-19 pandemic and economic turmoil has made Gen Zers even more fearful about the future and their own security, turning high schools into petri dishes of stress.

The pressure to figure out all of the answers in high school is a real issue. That pressure peaks when college applications ask students for their intended major or majors. Once students hit “submit,” their fate seems immutable.

I grew up thinking that college was the place where I’d “find myself.” Every coming-of-age book and movie I consumed romanticized the idea of college as a vehicle of self-discovery.

Now, many first-year students are entering college with the feeling that it’s already too late to change direction. They’ve internalized the mindset that high school is the place to make arrangements for their future, and college is the place to start executing their plans.

While it’s great that high schoolers are contemplating their futures, this accelerated timeline makes education seem like a race when it should be a steady journey with many detours.

High schoolers should know that they have plenty of time to chart a course for themselves.

High school is more than a college proxy and a career launchpad; it’s a place to make memories, build relationships, and start pondering big questions.

And yes, some of those questions will be career-related, but others will help students figure out who they want to be, independent of the classroom and the workplace.