More News

As the members of the Class of 2009 leave Brunswick and Middletown high schools to begin the next phases of their young lives, staff and faculty are being left behind once again, wishing the graduates well as they do every year.

Some, such as Middletown High School guidance counselor Sue Blair, have been there for students as they matured from early teenagers into young adults ready to make major life choices such as whether to attend college or join the military.

For Blair, who has been a part of the 2009 graduates' lives for the last three years, every graduation renews varied emotions. She feels joy while watching a class of Knights move on to bigger and better things and also sadness upon seeing them pass through the school's doors for the final time.

"It's definitely a mixed day. You're glad to see them move on, but the ones you really have grown to love, you are selfishly sad to see them go," she said. "Sometimes the students I've grown to love, I don't know how I'll go on without them."

For elementary school mentors, however, such as Dana Austin, a counselor at Valley Elementary School who was around when some of the students graduating this year from Brunswick High School began their educational journey, the overwhelming feeling is more often a sense of pride and fulfillment.

"I think it's very rewarding to see students that we've worked with finishing school and being successful," Austin said. "For me, I work with students on the elementary level who might be needy, and I feel like I'm very pleased with some students I see who are setting the goal to earn their high school degree to enter the workforce."

Blair and Austin share a sense of fulfillment in seeing their students graduating, but the excitement is slightly tempered this year due to the depressed economy.

Blair said a key effect of the economic downturn has been changing students' college choices. She said she does not have statistics yet, but that by her estimation about 10 percent more graduates will choose to attend community college than did last year.

She also said several talented students who might not have done so in previous years have scaled back their search for schools based on aid and cost.

"I have a kid that has been accepted — he's very, very bright — in New York, California, more prestigious schools, but he's going to Mount St. Mary's [in Emmitsburg], which is one of the finest business schools in the area, more because of the finances than any other reason," she said.

Despite the scaling back of some dreams, Blair said she and her students believe the class has a bright future, and that by the time students graduate from college the economy should be back on track to provide them with jobs.

"Kids are naturally optimistic. And four years when you're 17 is like 4 million years when you're 47 years old," she said. "So kids think that the world will be back to a place where you graduate from college and go on with your life four years from now, and I think it will be, too."

E-mail Connor Adams Sheets at csheets@gazette.net.