My High School Graduation Protest

Last night was my twin daughters’ high school graduation. Raven and Chloe: officially free from institutional hallway passes and cafeteria trays.

The bleachers were packed. Proud families, tight blazers, hair curled just-so. And then… the speeches.

You’ve heard them. The ones stitched together from the scraps of a thousand LinkedIn posts. A quilt of buzzwords passed off as insight. Resilience. Growth mindset. Grit. Dreams. Optimism. Your potential. Do your best. Be your best. Believe in yourself. The air thickened with recycled syllables until I was convinced my brain was trying to tap out of my skull.

This I realized is how ADHD starts (added to this list). Students with heels bouncing fast as an unconscious plea to stay awake. A faculty staff member in their flowery robe, hunched over an iPhone playing “Fun Puppy Run” like a desperate toddler waiting for playtime. In moments like this the collective droning of institutional cheerleading turns your neurons into scattershot.

And then, salvation. A micro-miracle.

Joe (sitting next to me) - someone I haven’t seen in four years since our girls shared a soccer field and Capri Suns. His older son stands up to use the bathroom, and Joe leans in and says the five sexiest words a person can hear during a graduation: “The concession stand is open.”

What I did next might be against school policy and certainly against the norms of polite, restrained, performatively proud parenting.

I asked Joe, as kindly as I could, if he might secure for me a hamburger with barbecue sauce, ketchup, bacon, and those curly fries. He nodded like a man who understood the assignment.

Ten minutes later, his son returned like a fast-food saint. (Side note: this is the path to religious conversion as opposed to door knocks by a pale white kid in a collared shirt clinging to the Book of Mormon.)

When he handed me the greasy plastic bucket, I caught two waves of emotion ripple through the adjacent crowd. First, visible disgust. This was not in the pamphlet. Second, thinly veiled jealousy because I was eating hot food while they were pretending to care about the superintendent’s advice about how they should carry-on if they ever get rejected from a job.

The 2025 Centreville High School Graduation in one pic.

Think of this meal as micro-dissent (Curious? Take the quiz to discover your preferred flavor of rebellion - here).

I didn’t shout. I didn’t tweet. I didn’t wave a sign or storm a stage. I honored my body, my hunger, and my utter disinterest in hearing another adult say “journey” as a noun. I chose pleasure in a sea of performance.

Why Do Smart Adults Downplay the Awesomeness of Hedonism?

This is what we forget: Just because the group is doing it, doesn’t mean you have to. Just because it’s “the norm,” doesn’t mean it makes sense. Just because the script says sit quietly and nod solemnly, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get the burger.

Micro-dissent is how we stay sane. It’s the quiet muscle of boundary-setting. The art of saying, “You all can keep pretending this is inspiring, but I’m starving.”

Extra Curiosities:

Want a dose of real inspiration with spectacular science and stories to back it? For your next beach trip, do yourself a favor and dig into Adam Galinsky's Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others. One of the best non-fiction books I’ve read this year. I am astounded at how few people are talking about it …

Get it - on sale here

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Todd B. Kashdan is the author of several books including The Upside of Your Dark Side (Penguin) and The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent and Defy Effectively (Avery/Penguin) and Professor of Psychology and Founder of The Well-Being Laboratory at George Mason University.

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