Why I Shredded My High School Essay
And what I understand now that I couldn’t then.
The year I graduated from high school, 1999, I was one of a handful of students who volunteered to give a speech at Senior Awards Night. The theme was something like:
Why I’m grateful to be an American.
I may be misremembering the exact wording, but the prompt was familiar. Craft a meaningful declaration of patriotism from the barely-formed brain of a late-stage teenager.
There was scholarship money involved for the winners, which is why I participated. That, and I’ve never met a microphone I didn’t like.
I don’t remember what I wrote or said. What I do remember is finding a copy of the essay years later, tucked into a box with yearbooks and other sentimental clutter. I read a few lines and felt my whole body cringe. It was embarrassingly shallow and self-important, so I shredded it without hesitation.
A small mercy: it happened before everyone had a video camera in their pocket.
I’m sure a VHS recording still exists in some forgotten box on a dusty shelf somewhere in Jaffrey-Rindge, New Hampshire. I don’t need to see it. I remember two things clearly:
I got a standing ovation. (Undoubtedly because of my delivery, not the content.)
Another essay, one far better than mine, did not.
I remember the writer’s name and the way he delivered his speech. But in case he feels the same discomfort about the whole exercise, I won’t name him. What I will share is what’s stayed with me for the past 26 years: his thesis.
He was grateful to be an American because he had never had to think about it.
Because, as a natural-born citizen growing up in rural New Hampshire, his nationality was not something he had to question, defend, or even notice. It simply was. He could just be.
He said it far more eloquently than I just did, but his point was made to me.
Elder millennials came of age in a moment when patriotism wasn’t a question or a burden. It was ambient. We weren’t forced to interrogate it. We weren’t asked to earn it. We didn’t fear it.
We knew we could be sent to war.
We didn’t know that trying to build a stable, law-abiding life would require us to take on lifelong debt to get a college degree, a decent job, or a modest home.
Those who avoided student loans may not have been so lucky with the timing of their first home, if they bought during the era when mortgages were handed out like candy at the parade.
We became adults just in time to see real progress.
The first Black President.
Same-sex marriage legally recognized.
Some form of accessible healthcare.
Now, in our forties, we’re watching a different country emerge.
One where families are torn apart, vulnerable communities are targeted, and healthcare access is treated as a privilege, not a right.
I live with Stage IV cancer. And I’ve spent time, real time, researching what it would take to become a citizen of Australia, Canada, or Sweden. Not for some political stunt. Not for a change of scenery. But to survive.
Because there is a very real possibility that soon, I will be denied access to health insurance. Which is just a capitalist way of saying health care.
I woke up on the Fourth of July knowing I’d spend the day packing up my house. It’s going on the market this month. Staying isn’t financially responsible given my diagnosis. I’ve run the numbers more times than I care to admit. I can’t afford to be both sick and American.
And maybe that’s why my former classmate’s essay circled my mind all day.
Because he was right.
It was a remarkable thing to come of age without constantly worrying about what your government might do next.
I just wish more of us had recognized how rare that experience was—before we denied our teenagers the same grace, and left the door wide open for fear, cruelty, and complacency to destroy what little peace we thought was permanent.
I wish the Fourth of July were all about ice cream and sparklers, but it’s not.