words from wesley

Graduation is only weeks away for high school seniors at Bremerton High School, King’s West School, Renaissance High School and West Sound Technical School, an exciting time for students in area classrooms, especially those special seniors.

Remember senior year of high school? As school years go, senior is one of the best. After all, it’s the last.

Senior year is unique — Senior-itis and skipped study sessions, aside — because it marks the end of one era, and the beginning of another.

When Warriors, Knights and the rest of the senior gang sport caps and gowns in the coming weeks, they’ll do more than shed street-clothes for goofy garments. They’ll part with the hallways, classrooms and teachers they’ve come to know, replacing familiarity with the foreignness of work, college, travel or any trail they choose to blaze.

While high school memories will find nooks in their hearts, lasting in some fashion or another for a lifetime, our graduating seniors soon will begin to etch their own picture of the not-so-predictable-future.

That’s why graduating high school — or taking any step forward, for that matter — is exciting; it’s an accomplishment, opportunity and time of transition all in one.

Certainly an accomplishment, earning a high school diploma is not automatic. Diplomas don’t fall with the rain from our Bremerton sky, and while some students pass with flying colors, others struggle. To graduate is a proud feat.

Certainly an opportunity, diplomas open doors. Whether to college, a skilled trade or self-discovery, diplomas are a gateway toward advancement and a brighter future.

Certainly a time of transition, like the constant change around us, high school graduation is stepping from one boundary into another.

Graduation, too, is a chance to recognize the people who make schools run. From the district superintendent to teachers to bus drivers to volunteer parents to the students in the classroom and everyone else along the way, it takes teamwork to build champion schools that graduate champion students.

Henry Ford once said of teamwork:

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”

For this year’s graduates, who not only worked through four years of secondary education, but also the eight years prior, Ford’s words encompass the relationships built between students, staff and parents en route to a successful graduation.

So whether you’re a parent, teacher, sibling or even a graduate yourself, enjoy the coming weeks because graduation is a unique time.

Congratulations, class of 2008.

Wesley Remmer is a writer for the Bremerton Patriot.