Commencement!

Commencement.  

Commencing?

Commencin'

All the same.  A big deal, in a large gymnasium or football field, to embrace and then send off the graduates.  Those young adults are commencin' to become!  

High school graduation holds hopes for students looking at their immediate future in their community, be it college life, or retail, mechanical, electrical, agricultural.  These young adults are commencing to embark on a new chapter - hopefully, something that they will fondly remember some decades from now.  And hopefully, these new chapters will involve us, the community, and how we need and appreciate our new members of Manhattan society.   

I graduated from Oklahoma State University with two degrees, with grad school at UConn, none of which I followed, and yet, I flourished, somehow, through a wealth and a dearth of gainful employment.  The career path was never clear to me.  I have friends who went right from Uni to their chosen accounting corporations, never to waiver from that frame.  I have friends and family who took their diplomas and returned to their homeland, the generations-rich farms that they wholly embraced as their next chapter.  Omigoodness, all my friends and family who took their education degrees, and the bits in their mouths, and made such a difference in so many young lives.  I have friends who saw that rainbow at the end of nursing school, and med school, and have followed their path for decades. 

 And the rest of us, that seemingly meandered through education as if it were a buffet (me), who tested the waters of every potential employment creek and river.  So many of us, mainly mothers, opted for the SAHM acronym, and in my experience and opinion, WHAT A GREAT DECISION.  I have never looked back at my decision.

Too, self-employment has served many of us very well.    

It does "take a village".  Our communities, and within the boundaries, come all the wants and needs of which we expect.  I have a good physician.  I have an amazing (and patient) electrician.  I really love our librarians.  I really, REALLY appreciate our trash men.  Really.  Our farrier, our pastor, our veterinarian, our tire people, omigoodness: THE GROCERY STORE EMPLOYEES.  Our hay man!  The horticultural folks every spring, summer and fall.    

And so, commencement is here, and now.  Let's usher in all the newly grads from high school and colleges.