Going Out Into The World

There is a sno-cone stand not too far from our place that my wife and I frequent. I would venture to guess it's one of only a few, if not the only one in our county, as I've never found another one around here. This particular sno-cone stand has been in operation at the same location for 21 years, and opens usually in late April. I think it's family owned.

Right now, it's about six weeks or so into its summer business season and my wife and I have been there at least once a week. The first couple summers we lived in this area, the same girls were there each day, each summer, making the sno cones. This year, there are a couple new girls working there. After about four weeks of us going there this year, finally one day the girl who is there the most says to me, "Same as usual?," before I even get up to the counter.

So we struck up a conversation. I found out her name is Amanda and she'll be going to college this fall at the college that my wife works at. I told her, "Well, my wife and I will be coming by alot this summer so you might as well know our names too," and I told them to her. Friday evening I went by there to get a sno cone and as I made my way up to the window she excitedly says, "I got my diploma yesterday!!" and I congratulated her.

We found out the other day (the idea hadn't really registered with us at any time before now) that the flower girl at our wedding (who was six at the time) is graduating from high school this weekend. She'll be going off to college next year and that is making my wife and I feel really old.

Then there's seven kids at our church that graduated high school this week. We've only been going to our church for about three years, but these kids have been fun to watch mature. Last weekend, we had Senior Sunday and they led both of our services. They're a complete trip -- some are really shy and nervous when speaking, some are comical - and one of them, Patrick, a drummer in our Praise Team who was presented his Eagle Scout award that same Sunday, performed a song that he wrote about what our church means to him. I was really impressed.

Everything with my high school graduation happened so quickly it's really hard to remember all the details of it. Frankly, I wasn't too concerned about anything that day other than getting that diploma in my hands and being totally done with high school. I was ready to move on to college.

I remember my grandparents shouting in excitement as I got my diploma, chuckling under my breath, and really wanting to call my principal something not so nice as I shook his hand. I probably exchanged more words that day with the girl sitting beside me than I had with her our entire time in high school. And one of my best friends was the only one to toss his graduation cap into the air -- all because we had been warned not to by the aforementioned principal.

Having a passing interest in politics at that point, I didn't really give too much thought to the status of the political landscape at that point or my role in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, I could get on a soapbox if I really wanted to ... but I didn't really get into politics really heavy until college.

The world has changed a lot even in the 16 years since I graduated high school. We didn't have cell phones or the Internet; music videos, television shows and movies weren't rampant with sleaze and violence (Ok, we had some); we didn't have presidents having affairs with interns, congressmen having bathroom trysts with members of the same sex, or governors getting it on with call girls (OK, we probably did, but we didn't really know about it); we were playing Zork and had never heard of anything called Grand Theft Auto; we couldn't even imagine someone flying aircraft into skyscrapers and killing thousands of people; Ecstasy? GHB? What's that? - we were just then starting to hear about crack. Kids and families are facing problems and issues now that even in 1992 it would been difficult to imagine, let alone in 1952.

People give the current generation of students alot of crap, saying they're lazy and lack dedication, moral character, and discipline.

It's hard for me to make that type of generalization, or stereotype, if you will, regarding this generation considering my job. I see every day at the college I work at the determination of this generation. There's a few that I just shake my head at sometimes because they're immature idiots, but they're college kids and that's what college kids do.

There are so many factors with every generation that mold each individual and help define their characater, whether good or bad. Yes, there are some bad apples among those individuals, but there's also the shiny apples.

There's a student that just graduated from the college I work at who came from a horrible family situation -- she and many of her 14 siblings were victims of sexual abuse at the hands of their father. The children are now scattered across the state, either in children's homes or foster care. As the oldest, she just became the first of her family to graduate from college. While she was at our college, she was active in more than a dozen activities or groups. And now she's off to another school to complete a Nursing degree.

I do wish all of this year's graduates good luck and success in the future; and I wish for them to develop into strong leaders with a passion for what they do in their careers and their personal lives. They've got a mess on their hands with a broken economy and a country that has lost alot of faith and trust in its leadership at virtually all levels. Hopefully they'll do a better job when they get into those positions than the vast majority of people running this country right now.