Opinion : Life ain\'t always harder after high school

I've got some very good news for some of you graduates regarding something you may have heard during a graduation ceremony: It's absolutely untrue.

Often, during a commencement speech, someone will say, "High school is the easiest time of your life. The challenges you face will be harder from now on."

But there is something you need to know: That statement is not always true; in some cases, it's absolutely wrong.

Yes, for most high school graduates in modern America, that statement is accurate. They have grown up with healthy parents who were able to provide them all they need (if not everything they thought they wanted). They were free to choose which classes to take, which activities to add to their schedule.

But for some young people, including many of our 2011 VSHS graduates, hearing that high school was the "easiest" time of their life would be either laughable, or downright depressing.

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the gym Sunday afternoon was a row of people sitting near the back, wearing matching T-shirts. Along with the familiar pink ribbon, there was a message on the back of the shirts: "Once you choose hope, anything's possible."

Cancer has never plagued my family, but still, I could relate to the student whose relatives wore those shirts to graduation.

I was in study hall in November of 1982. We had just moved to a nice new house in a quiet neighborhood in Independence. I had made a trip to Montreal with the French Club a few months earlier.

The intercom buzzed. The teacher sent me to the office. Dad had just suffered a heart attack.

Dad survived, but the financial impact of losing his job (they closed the plant where he worked before he was healthy enough to return) was just one of the challenges that affected me (but not others in the Class of 1984). Then I broke my left foot in the spring of 1983 (a minor setback), and tore my ACL in gym class in the winter before I graduated (a major one).

I am sure that someone said, during my graduation 27 years ago, "this is the easiest time of your life." I think I probably laughed. Or prayed. Or both.

My high school experience was not normal after that November day in 1982. But neither was it unique.

There are, among the members of the VSHS Class of 2011, people with loved ones serving in dangerous war zones. You may have read about some of them in the local news. There are new graduates who have one (or in some cases, two) parents who are fighting cancer. For some of the graduates we congratulated this week, illness has been part of their family story for years. There are young men who in just a few months, will be wearing a military uniform, and may face some of the extreme dangers of war. There are other graduates who have been facing for years a variety of other challenges -- some of them made quite painfully public. Others face obstacles and challenges that are just as significant, even though hardly anyone will ever notice.

For some of you members of the Class of 2011, the rest of your life will be so much easier -- on most days -- than it was in high school. And because of what you survived while everyone around you seemed to be breezing through school life, you will be so much tougher, wiser and more compassionate.

While some graduation speakers promise that life will be harder when you walk out of that gymnasium, I can offer you the hope of better days to come, and the promise that the things you faced while still in high school will make you more prepared for the future.