It doesn’t really feel like it’s time for graduation here at Legacy Institute, but it is. Perhaps my many years of American education with a late summer starting time and a late spring or early summer finish has conditioned certain expectations about schooling, but for whatever the reason it just doesn’t feel as if school is over. And yet it is. On Sunday morning, six students will walk across a stage in formal clothing at the Empress Hotel in Chiang Mai in front of an audience of students, teachers, friends, family, and other well-wishers (including perhaps a few who are there for the food) and receive their certificates as graduates of Legacy Institute. It is a ritual I have participated in several times now (three university graduations, a seminary graduation, and high school graduation, besides the other ceremonies I have attended for friends and family), and one I always enjoy. Now, for the first time, I participate on the side of the teachers.

Three of those six students will be giving speeches. In the sort of person who likes practice and rehearsals, so tonight I had the three speakers (no one else showed up) give their speeches and I timed them to make sure they were all of reasonable length. They were. Two were less than five minutes and the other was a leisurely eight minutes or so. I gave them all the time of their speeches and made a few other comments. It was clear that whatever my own difficulties in seeing the end of school in early March that the students were in very much a valedictory state of mind. In listening to their speeches I saw certain parallels between them, certain connections that I thought worthy of mention.

All of the students commented that all of them had been afraid of English and had not liked studying English. I’m not sure of the precise reason for this. I know quite a few people who are engaged in ESL instruction, and it would seem as if English is a language that is far more often feared than it needs to be. All of the graduate speeches, which were in English, commented on the difficulty of learning English for these very bright young people. I wonder what it would take for people to view English less with fear and more with a sense of bravery. After all, as at least two of the speeches mentioned, all of the teachers (myself included) are very patient in helping others, so we are not the harshest of judges of the English of others. Quite the contrary, however exacting our standards are with our own patterns of communication.

It was also curious to see the different moods in the three speakers, all of whom had different moods. One speaker had a very melancholy temperament like mine, talking about her failures as a student, the frustrations of her past life, her urging others not to follow her example, her gratitude at the opportunities given to her. Another student rather phlegmatically seemed to take such opportunities for granted, glad that Legacy had not made him pay and praying every night for God’s guidance, but at the same time rather laid back in his approach. And the third speaker was very sanguine and optimistic, apologizing for any mistakes he may have made (like the first speaker) but very visibly proud and confident for being able to speak English in front of an audience that includes native speakers (like myself). It is clear that he views the opportunity to speak competently in English to native speakers as an immense accomplishment. And well he should.

Graduation tends to put graduates in a reflective state of mind. As someone who has graduated often, I will know this tendency to ponder how one spent one’s time, to think of how it could have gone differently or to reflect on what lessons we can pass on to those who come after us. And there is nothing inherently bad about any of that, although for some such a state of mind is rather filled with regrets and for others it is filled with confidence for a brighter future. Our different natures add different shades to our reflection, just like a filmmaker uses a yellow filter for a scene in the Mexican desert and a blue filter for life in America to shade our own perspective of such matters (as in the film Traffic). At any rate, I am always intrigued by seeing such shades and differences in others, even in a common event. I myself tend to feel somewhat bittersweet at such moments myself, as is my fashion. It’s good to know, I suppose, that I am not alone in this.