Graduation

Trent graduated from high school! He won awards for academic achievement and the Coach's Choice award for his time on the basketball team. Tina and I were there, along with all four of Trent's grandparents, an uncle, an aunt, and Trent's girlfriend Lizzie, who graduated last year. There were nine seniors in Trent's class. During my time substituting at the school, I met and talked to all of them. Unlike any graduation ceremony I've attended before, I knew every student who walked across that stage and was excited to see each one receive their diploma. Congratulations to all nine seniors of the Wye River Upper School Class of '24!

I spent some time looking at the title, Graduation, before I started writing. I used that title because it is what we call this event that I attended to see Trent get his diploma. When you graduate high school, it's a big deal. At least, when you're in high school. When you look at that word, you can see that it has most of the word gradual in there. When you pour liquid into a graduated cylinder, you can see how much liquid you've poured in. Reaching the top doesn't mean you're done; it just means you need a bigger cylinder. No matter what you do after you graduate from high school, you're going to continue moving toward the next gradation.

The next gradation for Trent is University of Maryland in the fall. Trent and I went to our respective orientations last week. Trent spent the night in a dorm room with someone he'd never met before, ate at a dining hall, and scheduled his classes. We signed up for the earliest orientation we could, so Trent would get to schedule his classes before everyone who decided to wait until later in the summer. Trent's schedule contains all the standard stuff for a first-year engineering student: Calculus, Chemistry, Mechanics, English, and his one elective, Communications. At Virginia Tech, the Mechanics class was called Statics. The Communications class sounds like a survey of verbal presentation skills in a variety of formats, from small groups to presenting at conferences. It all sounds exciting to me.

The parents' orientation involved sitting in lecture halls, watching student services organizations present slides. The campus police explained they had microphones that could place a gunshot anywhere on campus, 1,200 video cameras constantly surveilling campus, and a team of six bomb-sniffing dogs. I have mixed feelings about whether that makes campus seem safer. The dining services presentation got more questions than any other session. I couldn't be less concerned about their ability to feed Trent. If they get him to eat something other than pizza and chicken, they'll have exceeded the best I've ever done. The recurring theme of all the presentations was that parents need to let their students learn to figure things out for themselves. The mission was to be supportive, but encourage independence. That sounds tough, but it's probably easier than General Chemistry.

Having graduated from high school, Trent is now gradually headed to his next gradation. He's heading in a similar direction to the one I chose as a young man. He has some challenges that I didn't have to overcome and has already faced some that were still ahead of me when I was his age. Luckily, I think he's probably better at math than I was when I left for engineering school. I'll leave you with the side-by-side comparison of our freshman student ID pictures. Good luck, Trent!