Sometime after tomorrow afternoon, after the sounds of "Pomp and Circumstance" have faded and after the tassels have been moved, reality will set in.
The Monroe High School graduating class will be set free, to go out into the world. Their futures await.
One of my favorite annual projects is putting together the Scholarship pages for the annual awards night at MHS in early May. I enjoy going through the information we're given and reading about the students' plans for their education and later careers. It never fails to impress me what a fine group of individuals our schools and our community is sending out into the world.
Several of this year's scholarship winners have expressed an interest in nursing or other careers in the medical field. This is a very good thing: There's plenty of news stories and reports that indicate there will continue to be an increasing need for workers in health care as our population continues to age.
Several are going into agriculture-related fields - not a surprise in this area. It's a worthy field of study and will help strengthen our local ag community.
There also are numerous students going on to study accounting and related fields. From what I read, this is another solid career choice with strong job prospects.
A handful want to become teachers. That's encouraging: Good teachers are vital to the health and success of a community. Teachers have the ability to change the world, one child at a time.
A few others stood out as I scanned through the columns.
Abigail Bethke wants to become an author, an editor or a librarian. Ah, a young woman after my own heart. Now, more than ever, we need individuals of letters.
Kylie Houston wants to become a funeral director. She reflects a growing trend of more woman in that field. What a noble calling - funeral directors must be very sensitive and empathetic to work with families going through the worst days of their lives. It must be a very stressful career, but I imagine helping give the deceased a proper farewell is also very rewarding.
But the career aspirations of Josh Smith in the MHS Class of 2017 were unlike any I've seen in all my years of putting the Scholarship pages together: He wants to be a ship captain.
Remember, this is a kid from Monroe. Where we don't have any water.
So I called Josh this week to find out how he landed on this career choice. As it turns out, despite growing up in land-locked Monroe, Josh has been fortunate enough to spend considerable time around water: His family has a place on a lake in northern Wisconsin and another home in the Florida Keys.
"We travel a lot," Josh said. "I get a lot of time on the water."
And as an Eagle Scout, Josh had an opportunity to participate in Florida Sea Base, a high-adventure program run by the Boy Scouts of America in the Keys, where he spent a week on a sailboat.
Josh said that experience opened his eyes.
He did some research - actually, he mentioned research several times in our conversation, and it sounds like he has this pretty thoroughly vetted - and found a program at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan. His plans to earn a degree in maritime technology that will allow him to captain ships on the Great Lakes and the ocean.
"I'm very excited," he said.
Once he's done with his schooling, Josh said he wants to run shipping freighters on the Great Lakes. Ultimately, he wants to run a charter fishing boat business in the Keys by the time he retires.
I don't know the first thing about ship captaining but I can tell you this after a brief phone conversation with Josh: He seems mature, well-spoken, polite and enthusiastic. He's obviously given his future a lot of thought, and I would stake money he will make a very capable ship captain. And someday, when I finally make it to the Keys myself, I will not be surprised at all to see he has his own charter business going.
I was not quite as prepared for my future as Josh and many of these students seem to be. I did know that I wanted to be a writer, and at some point in high school, my father sat me down and explained that given my (limited) skill set and desire to write, tempered with the need to support myself, I should be either an English teacher or a reporter. My older sister was a newspaper reporter and I had a vivid recollection of watching her shoot photos of a Fourth of July rodeo from the center of the ring and thinking it would be so cool to be in the middle of the action.
So naturally, I chose the option that involves working holidays and the possibility of being gored by angry bulls, and more than three decades later, here I am.
My father gave me some other advice I've never forgotten: You have a lot of years of work ahead of you so you may as well do something you enjoy.
I have been fortunate to enjoy my work, despite the angry bulls (figuratively speaking) and rotten hours (literally speaking.)
And I wish the same for Josh and all our other new graduates, whether they are entering the workforce straight away, joining the armed forces, continuing their education or taking some time to figure it all out.
Your future awaits. Enjoy.
- Mary Jane Grenzow is editor of the Monroe Times.
She can be reached at editor@ themonroetimes.com. Her column appears on Saturdays.
The Monroe High School graduating class will be set free, to go out into the world. Their futures await.
One of my favorite annual projects is putting together the Scholarship pages for the annual awards night at MHS in early May. I enjoy going through the information we're given and reading about the students' plans for their education and later careers. It never fails to impress me what a fine group of individuals our schools and our community is sending out into the world.
Several of this year's scholarship winners have expressed an interest in nursing or other careers in the medical field. This is a very good thing: There's plenty of news stories and reports that indicate there will continue to be an increasing need for workers in health care as our population continues to age.
Several are going into agriculture-related fields - not a surprise in this area. It's a worthy field of study and will help strengthen our local ag community.
There also are numerous students going on to study accounting and related fields. From what I read, this is another solid career choice with strong job prospects.
A handful want to become teachers. That's encouraging: Good teachers are vital to the health and success of a community. Teachers have the ability to change the world, one child at a time.
A few others stood out as I scanned through the columns.
Abigail Bethke wants to become an author, an editor or a librarian. Ah, a young woman after my own heart. Now, more than ever, we need individuals of letters.
Kylie Houston wants to become a funeral director. She reflects a growing trend of more woman in that field. What a noble calling - funeral directors must be very sensitive and empathetic to work with families going through the worst days of their lives. It must be a very stressful career, but I imagine helping give the deceased a proper farewell is also very rewarding.
But the career aspirations of Josh Smith in the MHS Class of 2017 were unlike any I've seen in all my years of putting the Scholarship pages together: He wants to be a ship captain.
Remember, this is a kid from Monroe. Where we don't have any water.
So I called Josh this week to find out how he landed on this career choice. As it turns out, despite growing up in land-locked Monroe, Josh has been fortunate enough to spend considerable time around water: His family has a place on a lake in northern Wisconsin and another home in the Florida Keys.
"We travel a lot," Josh said. "I get a lot of time on the water."
And as an Eagle Scout, Josh had an opportunity to participate in Florida Sea Base, a high-adventure program run by the Boy Scouts of America in the Keys, where he spent a week on a sailboat.
Josh said that experience opened his eyes.
He did some research - actually, he mentioned research several times in our conversation, and it sounds like he has this pretty thoroughly vetted - and found a program at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan. His plans to earn a degree in maritime technology that will allow him to captain ships on the Great Lakes and the ocean.
"I'm very excited," he said.
Once he's done with his schooling, Josh said he wants to run shipping freighters on the Great Lakes. Ultimately, he wants to run a charter fishing boat business in the Keys by the time he retires.
I don't know the first thing about ship captaining but I can tell you this after a brief phone conversation with Josh: He seems mature, well-spoken, polite and enthusiastic. He's obviously given his future a lot of thought, and I would stake money he will make a very capable ship captain. And someday, when I finally make it to the Keys myself, I will not be surprised at all to see he has his own charter business going.
I was not quite as prepared for my future as Josh and many of these students seem to be. I did know that I wanted to be a writer, and at some point in high school, my father sat me down and explained that given my (limited) skill set and desire to write, tempered with the need to support myself, I should be either an English teacher or a reporter. My older sister was a newspaper reporter and I had a vivid recollection of watching her shoot photos of a Fourth of July rodeo from the center of the ring and thinking it would be so cool to be in the middle of the action.
So naturally, I chose the option that involves working holidays and the possibility of being gored by angry bulls, and more than three decades later, here I am.
My father gave me some other advice I've never forgotten: You have a lot of years of work ahead of you so you may as well do something you enjoy.
I have been fortunate to enjoy my work, despite the angry bulls (figuratively speaking) and rotten hours (literally speaking.)
And I wish the same for Josh and all our other new graduates, whether they are entering the workforce straight away, joining the armed forces, continuing their education or taking some time to figure it all out.
Your future awaits. Enjoy.
- Mary Jane Grenzow is editor of the Monroe Times.
She can be reached at editor@ themonroetimes.com. Her column appears on Saturdays.
