A surprise graduation

My classes do a "graduation"

In America expectations are that everyone will graduate high school with only one senior year. Here on Clove Island, expectations are different. Once in high school, each year of school is labeled by the number of years left. The last grade is called “last”, and at the end of the year you have to take a big national exam. Many students will take this final exam several times before passing. After exams finish they announce what day the results will be released. On the appointed day, most radios on the island are tuned to the proper frequency to listen as name after name is read of those who passed. Some pass with high honors, some with honors, some only pass. And then there are those who are allowed to try again with the oral version of the exam. But if your name isn’t read, you’ll have to try again next year.

There’s no graduation ceremony. No Pomp and Circumstance with robes and hats and diploma covers for the end of high school. Nope.

So what do they do instead?

A couple of weeks ago my neighbors forewarned me—“hey, on Wednesday, come for drinks, God-willing!” That was my party invitation. Assuming, of course, that the son who had taken the exam heard his name on the radio.

When the results were announced, the family had every radio tuned to the same frequency listening for one name. The shop in their house had the radio playing, the living room radio, the car parked outside, every radio was listening as almost 1,000 names were read over the air.

And then they heard the name they’d been waiting for. Cheering erupted! “Congratulations!!!” Horns honking and kids yelling, neighbors running down the street to congratulate the whole family. Another son got in the car with the grandmother to go buy pop for the neighborhood. That night there was a steady stream of neighbors and friends coming to collect their pop and congratulate the graduate.

See, a surprise graduation! So if you pass your exam, you are duty-bound to provide pop for anyone who comes by to congratulate you. And if you know that someone passed their exam you are duty-bound to visit and congratulate them. Why have a ceremony, when you can just have a spontaneous party?