On May 16 the sun will shine in the late afternoon on the vibrant green grass of the White Mountains Community College's Berlin campus as families stream into the large white tent on the beautifully manicured field.
Inside the south wing the hallway will be lined with the graduation procession, adorned in all the pomp and circumstances of academic glory, waiting for the music to begin. Those of us in the front lines of the procession, the administration, faculty of the college, trustees of the New Hampshire Community College System, and invited dignitaries, have marched at the forefront of commencement exercises for years. All of us, at one time or another, were led into the ceremonies by the professors and presidents of the schools that we attended.
On May 16 we will be doing it again, and as we take those first few steps out the building and out into the early evening, we will again get that lump in our throat, as the emotion of the moment sweeps over us. No matter how many times we've done this, it never gets old.
We will be celebrating our 41st graduation here at White Mountains Community College. That's a lot of years, two generations worth, and some of the students attending college at our Berlin campus have grandparents who received their higher education here. Some of those grandparents might even be in the audience of well-wishers under the tent on the 16th.
Much has changed over the past 41 years. The institution itself has changed, and some of the degrees we give out are in areas that hardly existed those four decades ago. Now we teach courses like Common Gateway Interfaces and Fundamentals of Unix along with our courses Biology and Nutrition. Our accounting program includes Accounting with Quickbooks, our office management curriculum has Introduction to PowerPoint.
Who could have guessed, those 41 years ago, how much the world would change, and yet how much it would remain the same.
What has stayed the same is the motivation of our students, as they strive to assimilate the knowledge and learn the skills that will help them attain success in whatever path they take next, whether it is on to more formal education or to a new career. They have worked hard, as did the two generations of students before them, and they deserve the very best of what life has to offer.
Those are some of the thoughts that will be running through our minds, as we stand at the podium and look out at the joyful faces of the students we’ve come to know over the past two years. We will be looking out at their parents, too, and their siblings, spouses, children, grandparents, and friends. We will be wishing we could capture and bottle the overwhelming pride that is in their faces and spill it out into the first day of classes in the fall so that those just starting out will see how great the reward will be at the end.
We will say this again on graduation day, but it is worth saying here, too: Best wishes to the Class of 2008 of White Mountains Community College.
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