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Congratulations — you've earned it
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If the recent spate of crumby weather has got you down, or the sputtering economy has you singing the blues on karaoke night, just start reading the lists of area graduates in our newspaper. The realization of the accomplishments of so many of our young people might not stop the rain but it should give you a new tune to sing.
We take great pride in the accomplishments of our readers' diverse families and find therein hope for our collective future. Those graduates achieved their diplomas, as ever, by dint of hard work and perseverance. They were helped along the way by dedicated educators and administrators and loving parents. They were surely at times also hindered by ineffectual teachers or selfish adults. But the graduates overcame all hurdles placed before them. In order to succeed, each had to rely ultimately upon herself or himself. The grads certainly needed as well to come to terms with their own proverbial raging hormones. They had to block out the myriad distractions of that constant noise known as popular culture. Many of the young scholars in our area had to overcome the inertia of the privileged or the fatigue of the underprivileged in order to keep up the effort required to learn about ideas new to them. The nobility of that intellectual struggle is what makes its reward so praiseworthy.
Whether that diploma is the first step on a path to a higher education or to advanced occupational training or whether it marks an individual's caesura with institutions of learning in favor of "the real world," it remains a worthwhile achievement upon which we congratulate all area graduates. Those diplomas bespeak inner changes brought about through that humanist discipline called learning. Now that is both a reason to love our graduates and something to bring on the sunshine.
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