'Stužková'

Every student in our school knows that one day a green ribbon will be pinned on their dress or suit. Everyone knows that when that “D-day” comes, their life at grammar school will soon be over and Maturita is the only thing ahead of them. ´Stužková´ is the event that most of us look forward to. All we see are beautiful dresses, moments spent with our parents and favourite teachers, and memories remembered for the rest of our lives. But is this only an illusion or is ´Stužková´ really a dream that comes true?

For me, and probably for most of the class, the time before ´Stužková´ was really stressful. All the girls in our class would probably say the same. Choosing a dress, making appointments at the hairdresser’s, the beautician´s, the nail artist´s and having someone do my make-up, was a daydream and also a nightmare. Furthermore, we had to organise the whole program and you wouldn’t believe how difficult it was to arrange these things in peace without arguing. Probably the most problematic part was: ‘How many drinks should we have? (I mean non alcoholic drinks, of course)’. However, all our problems didn’t end up being solved. Other questions were brought up: ‘Who will be our cameramen? Who will be taking pictures? Or, what kind of songs should we put in our photo presentation?’’ After all these little details had been set up we could finally focus on the more serious, official part of ´Stužková´.

At the beginning we sang Gaudeamus – the student´s hymn. Some good advice for you: NEVER LAUGH during singing! Believe me, I know what I am talking about. Next there were speeches given by the headmistress, our class teacher, parents and us. Then we thanked our moms and dads for all the years they had been raising and supporting us. (Lots of tears, indeed). And then the actual ceremony of pinning the ribbon came. At that moment I actually realised that I was all grown up and that my student life was slowly but surely ending.

The unofficial (funny) part started with my classmate singing. Then we had few sketches, but what I liked most was the dance at the end of the program where our whole class danced together.  

At midnight, poems made only for us were read and we lit candles, putting them on the table in the shape of infinity (because we are going to last forever, just kidding). Our class sang a song, the one we had introduced during ´pozývanie´. Finally, we cut the cake that we had been waiting for so long (by the way, it was delicious). Now the dancing started.

In the end I would like to say, that it was a quite hard and nerve-racking time, because of all the things we as a class had to set up, with all the preparations and so on, but I enjoyed it, and everyone else did too. You have probably heard the phrase that you will remember ´Stužková´ until the last days of your life. I can confirm that it was a night that I will remember forever.