F1nite

Grad Night, A Review

I'd probably give our school's grad night a 1.6/10. Most of this will be me-specific but if you're like me then stick along I guess.

Grad night was an event organized by some PTSO group at the high school I graduated from that basically took the graduating class out to 'party' at some location (all-encompassing) for a hefty fee of around 7 really good notebooks. Ultimately, I'd say go to grad night if you have a clear idea of what you want to do -- hanging around is an option, but it gets repetitive given that ultimately, you're limited. There's not an infinite number of things to do, you can't just wander around, there's security always watching you, etc etc.

For my specific experience, my grad night was at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, and we got around half of the boardwalk. The other half was given to a nearby high school. And as an overall, I just kind of wandered around and read about the political history of Tunisia (and other articles) on my phone. There wasn't much to it. The one time I went on a ride, I got spooked out of my mind. I'll just go through a detailed recap of the night below.

Recap:
~7:30pm -- I graduated! It was pretty cool but I was also pretty tired. I took some photos, saw some people (maybe for the last time?) and failed to find our goated farewell graduation speaker who I thought had one of the best speeches I've heard (esp. better than the opening/main graduation student speakers); great job Shreya and keep it up! Anyways, for me during this time, there was a lingering feeling of slight unease as I just got no details for Grad Night. The plan was for busses to transport us from our school to the Boardwalk, but when would we leave? What was going on with the administration? Where did they want us? These big questions were annoying as hell given that it seemed like I had no control over events. Fate wasn't in my control, and I hated that.
~8:15 -- Anyways, I somehow successfully change into some warmer street clothes and board the bus. Turns out our bus is literally packed (0 empty seats?) but it's cool that I sat next to someone I knew and not some random football player. That would've been weird. Goes to show that I should've paid attention to details and not signed up for some random bus. Whatever :/
~[Bus Ride --> 9:35] -- I read a bit on Tunisia, browsed or something, and generally just tried to appreciate graduation. I couldn't really do that though and ended up just falling asleep. What else was there to do?
Waking up, the air, temperature, lighting, and smell had all changed so it felt like I was in another time zone. Weird quirk about sleeping on buses I guess.
~9:50 -- I'm pretty sure it was around here when we got let into the park. I don't do rides because I get scared so I just kind of walked around. Lame I know. So nothing really happened for a long time.
~10:30 - 12 -- Just wandering around. Saw some people from the other local high school (across a segregated border-like fence) and that was super cool reconnecting with great people from middle school. Other than that however, I was just third/fourth/fifth/second wheeling whatever my friends were doing since I didn't want to try anything (rope bridge, fireball). I also did go on a Ferris wheel at this point and decided that shit was too scary for me as I thought the whole thing might break at any point (I don't trust physics?) so yeah that was cool I guess.
12 - 1:40 -- After 12, the fatigue meaningfully caught up with me. I was essentially just zombieing around and like I remarked to my friend, I felt like a piece of roadkill rotting with its heart pulled out -- not feeling anything, not doing anything, just simply rotting away. Definitely would've been a better use of my time if I just slept instead of going to this big hoopla. At this point also, my friend was almost addicted to the rope bridge challenge (he ended up getting almost there) so I was just kind of rotting there while watching him fail.
Eventually, the night turned into a game of conserving energy -- both heat and the ability to stay awake. There was karaoke, a hypnotist, food, and friends, but nothing appealed to me. Eventually, I decided to actually do something to both pass the time and help my friend get over things but also that was the only shot I had to be happy (sometimes you just gotta do the things you think are uncool). So I got a caricature of me and my friend gone. And that was it.
~3:20 -- Yeah there was a bus ride home (people smoked weed) but I just slept (Best to bank up energy right?). Bus dropped us off, I got picked up, and at around 3:20, I had returned home and was getting ready to go to sleep. And even though I remember my pillow being super hard (in similar stiffness to the bus's headrests), that was some really enjoyable sleep to get.

So ultimately to sum up this night, for me, it was cold, miserable, and endearing. I saw all my friends having fun, did a few things of my own (however small they were), and ultimately just kind of was there. It most definitely is not something I would do again, as there really was no upside for me being there besides being with my friends....which is something I didn't really do either. At the end of the day thus, given my inability to go on the amusements at the amusement park and "hang out" in the teenager sense (fuck up some part of you just for the night?), grad night was not fun in any sense. That doesn't mean it was a bad experience, it was just maybe I could've had more fun literally walking around and thinking to myself and reflecting on the stars in the sky than going to the boardwalk. We didn't even get the side with mini-golf and laser tag, and since I wasn't content on wasting my life away at the small gimmicky arcade, I doomed myself to a bad day.

Anyways, some other notes: