College Graduation!

Our daughter graduated from college this month!  Of course, I’m thinking, “How quickly 21 years have gone by” since her birth.  So many family adventures, times of growing, times of stress, and many moments of sticking together as a little team.  While she was still in preschool, I knew I needed to reorganize my career in order to have more time with her, and I’m so grateful that opportunities allowed me to do that.

During her first year of college, we lived three hours away, but then we moved, and the trip to her college was 620 miles one way. A lot of the trip was on Interstate 70, the same highway I traveled thirty years ago when I was in graduate school. I even recognized a few places where I stayed while driving home for Christmas and summer breaks.

PTL, all our drives to her school were safe and incident free.  My anxieties about breaking down on the road (which has only happened a couple times my whole life) were unfounded.

Many of us go to college and our career paths begin to fall into place. It was certainly true for my wife and me.  The same happened with our daughter; dissatisfaction with a work-study job led her to another job, which in turn opened up areas of theatre work she hadn’t expected.  Now, she has the most amazing ability to design and sew theater costumes and outfits, in addition to her other training in production, music, and art history. A while ago she shared with me her material about her design assignments at her college, and I was proud of her skills and problem-solving processes. Among many other projects, she created a Chrysler Building dress for a recent season of The Producers. One of her pieces was featured in a news release.

Her graduation had a very nice balance of social time, good-bye moments, affirmation, and accomplishment. I compared my own graduations unfavorably to the satisfying quality of hers!

Driving back on I-70, her car and my hatchback were full of her belongings. She noted with chagrin that guys have so much fewer things to move than girls.  She lived on the fourth floor of her building, accessible when you go down one first-floor hallway, turn right down another hallway, take the old elevator (with doors that you open and close by hand) to the third floor, and then walk down another hallway and carry stuff up to the fourth floor.  With my wife along this trip, the process of loading the cars took a little less time.

Now her stuff is ready to be unpacked at home, as she figures out job possibilities and gets ready for the next steps in her career.  College grads face a difficult job market these days, but we’re hopeful for her possibilities---and prayerful for all grads as they hope to match their talents with good places for work and service.