Incredible Values Hiding Behind a Graduation Cap

Deriving from a very humble family, not having much but having enough to be happy. This was one of the many reasons that contributed to my ambition and desire of making myself and my relatives proud. In my culture, most people believe that if you don’t make it to finish school and have a good job and career, you may not be successful in society. With this mindset, making it to my High School graduation was never seen as an obstacle to me, instead, I have always seen myself way beyond a simple graduation. But, just the simple action of putting on a graduation gown and a well detailed decorated cap, made me the happiest and proudest person in life. My graduation Cap is one of the most valuable and remarkable artifacts I own.

I consider that graduation is one of the most important ceremonies in life. A Graduation cap is like a crown achieved at the end of the pageant. It portrays effort, struggles, recognition, and achievement. I decided to decorate my cap in the first place because I wanted my cap to bright up in between all others. I wanted people to see me wearing my cap and perceive the message I am trying to show. I identify myself as part of an immigrant subculture, this artifact portrays part of my subculture because it demonstrates the struggles I had to go through to make to where I am today. Having to immigrate to a different country seeking better opportunities and craving success was hard but I have always say that it is hard but never impossible. I had to leave

behind one of the most important people in my life, my dad, and that was what made it harder. Without knowing if I was ever going see him again, my mother, my siblings and I immigrated seeking for the opportunities we didn’t have back in my country. Every single day after the moment we immigrated, we gave work very hard to reunite our family, and I am grateful and happy to say that we persevere until we made it happen.

I will never forget the day of my high school graduation. I remember everyone congratulating me and making very nice comments about my creativity when decorating my cap. As shown in the picture above, I decided to decorate my graduation cap with a lot of glitter and flowers. For me, the glitters represent brightness and success, which I had earn throughout all these years. The flowers, on the other hand, had a mixture of gold, light and dark pink with silver stones in the center of each flower. The flowers represent friendship, love, self-love, self-appreciation, and self-desire of success, while each stone in the center of the flowers represented a specific goal or statement that in some way helped me make it to graduation. For example, the stone in the light pink flower in the middle of the cap represents my goal to always believe that I can, no matter if others don’t agree, seek for what you love and not for what you think is right for society. The cap also had a very nice quote that at the time of my graduation inspired me to believe that I was able to accomplish more. “And so, my journey begins”. This quote as I said, for me, means that at the time of my graduation my journey was just beginning because I have many more things coming my way in the future.

Overall, this cap will always be one of the most valuable artifacts I own. In the future, I want to show it to my kids, and grandkids and tell them the story of how hard it is for people to immigrate, but it is never impossible to accomplish what you want. This cap will be my weapon to demonstrate that faith and desire are all you need in life. I want to show my kids that they have to be humble and treat everyone the same because at the end of the day we all have our own story and we are the only ones that know the struggles we been through.