Congratulations dude! Time to get a job. Credit: Ben+Sam, Flickr

Ah, high school graduation ... I remember mine: There was a huge keg party afterward under the moon tower, "Slow Ride" was jamming loudly on a stereo somewhere, and we totally wailed on the incoming freshmen with wooden paddles. Wait, that was a scene from "Dazed and Confused."

In all honesty, most high school graduations are pretty much mind-numbing for everyone not armed with an air horn; unfortunately for me, I left mine in the car. If you're lucky enough to have a small graduating class, at least the event can be fairly quick and painless. For those of us who graduated in a class of 500 or more, you do so much politely clapping that you wanna puke -- then you do some more.

So just how much polite clapping will go on at high school graduations this year? According to Census Bureau projections, 3.3 million high school graduates will walk across the stage this May. Considering that the emcee allows for 3 seconds of applause for each student, that's 2,750 hours (114.5 days) of clapping.

Clearly, high school graduation isn't about the cheering. So what are the benefits of staying in school? The average annual earnings of someone without a high school diploma in 2007 was $21,484 while those with a high school diploma earned $31,286, according to the Census Bureau. Those with an "advanced degree" took home an average of $80,977.

How many of those "advanced degrees" will be handed out in 2010? Once again, according to the Census Bureau, somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.2 million advanced degrees will be handed out at America's institutions of higher learning during the 2009-2010 school year. That's a lot of polite clapping right there.

Celebrate your favorite grad with these cute cupcakes. No clapping required.