Graduation Day

Last night I attended my niece's graduation from high school. It was a sizable crowd at the football stadium, as there were over 400 students in the class of 2014--not uncommon for California high schools. The school orchestra played them in with the traditional "Pomp and Circumstance". While I was sitting next to Mom in the handicapped section of the field, and thus closer to the students as they processed down the center from the far side of the field, there were simply too many grads to spot Bri. Turns out she was seated on the opposite side of the field, as I discovered when her row got up to receive their diplomas.

The speakers were all brief and to the point. The principal spoke first, then the ASB president, whose walk down memory lane caused the principal to remark that she had similar memories from her graduation thirty years ago, making her 48 today. As she focused on trends from the Eighties (Big hair! Shoulder pads!), I was thinking about my high school graduation in 1971, and how much has changed since then. There were two valedictorians, and no salutatorians--I guess they both had perfect GPAs. After the students had received their diplomas, the orchestra played "Conquest". How did they choose that? I thought I was at a USC football game! The students then turned their tassels and tossed their caps in the air, the Alma Mater was played (but not sung-evidently nobody knew the words, which were on the back of the program) and the ceremony was over. Their was no actual recessional, although the orchestra did play John Williams' "Olympic Spirit"-to inspire the grads as they move on in their lives? Who knows!--as grads mingled with family and friends on the field.

We eventually found Bri, who had elected not to attend the all night party at one of Southern California's tourist attractions. We ended up down the block at Millies for a quiet family celebration with a few friends. Mom and I were home by 11 PM, and I was asleep soon after.

It was a great night, marred only by nightmare traffic and parking, the inability to see up close without a telephoto lens or binoculars (hindsight can be 20/20 in such things), and an increasingly noisy crowd as the ceremony wore on (All those names! All that cheering--and don't even get me started on the air horns. A few got past the bag check as we entered the stadium. Even from a distance, they were way too loud).

Bri is a bright young woman, and a hard worker. She is already working at her first job for one of the cinema chains. She loves photography and developed her skills on yearbook staff this year. Right now she is looking to become a nurse,partly out of her desire to help people, partly to follow her family's footsteps (Mom is a retired nurse, two of her daughters also went into nursing). Whether she continues in that direction remains to be seen--she is after all a newly minted high school graduate!