Spring has come and it is the season for boarding.
No, not for skateboards or outboard motors for boats, but mortarboards on heads.
The graduation ceremonies kick-off this Friday as Alberta High School of Fine Arts-Foothills Composite High School says good-bye to their Class of 2015. (Warning to graduands – it’s just a ceremony, you’ve still got final exams and a month of classes to go. That would have been easily forgotten if that was the case for me back in 1977 or ’78. When I got my actual 100th credit is a mystery for Sherlock Holmes).
I made the mistake of not attending my ceremony due to my high school mediocrity and also because I had a better chance of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature than getting a date.
My penalty for not allowing my parents to celebrate me going to summer school in just a few days — I have since had to attend about 73 graduation ceremonies due to my job.
Now, some have bordered on the side of ridiculous.
I’ve done kindergarten grads. Cute pictures, but are ceremonies needed for learning how to draw within the lines? Of course, that didn’t stop me from taking a giant piece of celebration cake.
I once covered a Grade 9 grad for a Grade 7 to 12 school.
When the guest speaker spoke of the students ‘continuing their journey in the halls of learning” I wanted to shout out – “You mean the hall right over there?”
Since being a grad from the 2,000-students Lord Beaverbrook of the 1970s, I have lost a bit of my cynicism for the ceremonies.
In one-high-school communities such as St. Paul, Vulcan, Nanton and Black Diamond, grad ceremonies are the biggest events of the year — virtually the entire town attends.
In the larger communities where I worked, High River and Okotoks, they were still small enough to have their charm.
At ceremonies for Foothills and Holy Trinity Academy it’s nice to see the smiles of young men and women I have got to know through my job.
What is often nicer is to hear the achievements of students I do not know — students who have flown under my sometimes myopic work radar.
So to all the graduands at the ceremonies this weekend, congratulations, have fun and don’t forget, you still have final exams.
Otherwise, you might be writing about graduation ceremonies when you are on the other side of 55…
