Samantha graduated from Tompkins Cortland Community College last week with a perfect 4.0 GPA. This is a huge event for her and we are all very, very proud of her for this accomplishment. The road wasn't easy.
Sam seemed to just barely make it across the finish line for High School. Her enthusiasm for learning was displaced by all of the things that puberty and adolescence brings; bad relationships, worse break ups, apathy, and all of the other things that put kids off a course they appeared to be on.
Early on Sam was very smart in grade school. Good grades, good looks, and a desire to go to college. As that waned in her senior year the future was pretty hazy. After she graduated she took a year off of school trying to figure life out. She lived with us during this time. Sam had lots of ideas but none of them seemed to stick. For every idea she had our response was pretty much the same - sounds good, how can we help - because anything that was going to her started in life would be better being stuck in idle.
One day Sam came to us with another idea; she wanted to go to college. Our response was the same - sounds good, how can we help. She asked for tuition. We paid with the stipulation that she get at least a 2.5 GPA because we knew she had the potential for those grade.
Sam finished her first semester with a 4.0 and returned for three more semesters with three more sets of perfect grades.
This is all her work - no one else can claim they inspired her, cajoled her, or did it for her.
I got to spend some time hanging around Cortland and Ithaca for two days catching up with some old friends. We had dinner the night before with family and friends down on Cayuga Lake.
Her graduation was a very pleasant event. The college - blessfully - had air conditioning and we got seats that were not in the bleachers. I graduated from a community college but I don't remember having a graduation - or I didn't attend it. Either way, I do not remember as spirited an event as TC3 held that evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment