‘You wonder how it all ended so fast’

Mike Swanson

Three speeches, a handful of beach balls and a little more than an

hour after taking their seats at Irvine Bowl on June 19, members of

Laguna Beach High School’s class of 2003 tossed their caps and

officially became freshmen again.

Most of the 206 graduates had spent 13 years waking at an

unpleasant hour and completing a variety of assignments of varying

levels of importance that led to their celebratory hour, but the

years blurred at the finish line.

“Now it seems like this happened so fast,” graduate Quinn Cargill

said. “You wait so long for it to happen, to actually be done, and

once you’re here, you wonder how it all ended so fast. It’s a little

crazy.”

The two student speeches delivered at the 8 p.m. ceremony, one by

valedictorian Annie Cronin -- whose mother was the high school’s

valedictorian in 1968 -- and one by senior Scott Brown, were fiery

enough to keep even the most boredom-prone graduation-goer listening.

Cronin’s centerpiece wasn’t Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln -- but Homer

Simpson.

Brown, meanwhile, went on a six-minute rant during his

“three-minute speech” focusing on knowledge, sanity and

enlightenment, going from finding Jesus to questioning the school’s

curriculum in three moves or less.

One part of his speech was edited out by the school board, Brown

said, but he didn’t feel censored at all.

“I really got to say what I wanted to say,” Brown said. “I’m sure

there’s flak to be gotten from some of what I said, but so far, I’ve

heard nothing but compliments.”

Brown, heading to USC’s school of cinema and television in August,

wants to be a screenwriter, which Cronin said she can’t imagine not

happening.

“I read his speech before he gave it, so I knew what was coming,

but that didn’t make it any less entertaining,” Cronin said. “He was

just being Scott up there.”

Cargill said his parents hardly knew what they’d just listened to

after Brown’s speech, and characterized their reaction with a word

some say defines the attitude of the graduates’ generation:

“Whatever.”

“It’s hard to retain one’s sanity in the high school setting,”

Brown said in his speech. “Too many variables. Bad blood gets to the

brain when you start to think that maybe cheese can be substituted on

those days when you run out of toothpaste or soap.

“I’ve never been able to understand high school. I tried, but then

blood started squirting out of my ears and I lost consciousness.”

Brown did manage to keep blood out of his commentary throughout

most of the speech, and saved his only critical comment until near

the end.

“I can say with confidence, however, that my fellow classmates and

I learned quite a few things about life, even if the curriculum

didn’t intend it,” he said.

School board member Bob Whalen nodded deliberately in response.

Chico State-bound Danny Michelson said the ceremony, and Grad Nite

at Dave and Buster’s in Irvine, resoundingly exceeded his

expectations.

“I heard from last year’s class that [graduation] was kind of

boring, but it was really fun, way better than I expected,” Michelson

said.

Delivering her speech that refuted Homer Simpson’s quote, “Trying

is the first step toward failure,” was nerve-racking, Cronin said,

but she expects her time at Bowdoin College, a small liberal-arts

school in Maine, to test her nerves further.

She expects to eventually go into pre-med, but wants to study as

many subjects as possible in her first couple of years.

“I’ve always known I’d go to college after high school, but

graduation makes it official,” she said. “It gives me the opportunity

to be officially independent, to go to Maine if I want to. For some,

it’s about finishing, but to me it’s about moving on. And it’s going

to be cold.”

Cronin isn’t ready to choose her ultimate path in life, but can’t

wait to see what an new place and entirely new people have to offer.

As her speech suggested, she won’t be worrying about failure.

“For the most part, we’ve realized our weaknesses and gotten past

them,” she told graduates. “What we all have to do is try new things

and be open to the future. Trying is the only way to succeed at

anything. This is why slogans and great quotes should always be

questioned. Evaluate them for what they leave out as much as for what

they say.”

* MIKE SWANSON is a reporter for the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot.

He covers education, public safety and City Hall. He can be reached

at 494-4321 or mike.swanson@latimes.com.