Local graduates celebrate years-long journey through school system

With all the talk lately about the Mat-Su Borough School District classified employees and teachers desiring better contracts, it’s almost gone unnoticed that Valley high schools will graduate their seniors in the coming days. Colony High School starts it all off this evening.

Graduation is a rite of passage, marking teens’ first step toward their emergence into an adult world.

For some, this summer will be one last fling before going to college where they will be on their own to make serious choices about what kind of man or woman they want to be. There will be challenges at every turn, and they won’t all be about education. This is the time when parents tearfully send them off to another world and hope they brought them up right.

For others, exiting high school means getting down to business and finding a job. Many of these students have skills that only work experience can improve on. They are welders, mechanics, plumbers and all the other trades that the world turns on. They are priceless in society, and a good trades worker can immediately make good money while their friends in college are borrowing money that will saddle them with debt for years to come.

For still others, a career in the military awaits. Strangers will bark orders at them from dawn to bunk time. They will go through rigorous training and do the most menial jobs as they learn the discipline it takes to be a defender of this country and all the benefits that come with being an American. They accept their duty, whether they like it or not, for all of us.

Family, friends, teachers and others will keep an eye on some of their favorite students to see how they grow into adulthood.

They will grieve when some die or are tragically killed too soon, as certainly that will be the case as it always has been.

Others will unfortunately see students’ names in this paper’s police blotter. Some of those will graduate into thieves, drug sellers and end up being felons with a dark future. A high school classmate may prosecute them.

All these students make up the fabric of our world and its inevitable future.

So when you watch these students walk across the stage, take a good look because they will never be the same again.