The mix of excitement and anxiety inside a high school graduate on commencement day feels peculiar. It is unique, too.
Unlike a college graduation ceremony, the cap-and-gown event for high schoolers loosens the world’s grip on them. College grads leave with hopes of starting careers and families — structures that involve deadlines, routines and traditions. By contrast, the teenagers graduating from five Vigo County high schools this weekend are feeling the exhilaration of leaving childhood. At this moment, we offer some advice to those newly minted adults …
n Know where you’re going.
There is nothing wrong with a dream to explore new horizons as a young man or woman. But the “real world” housing those adventures may seem more foreign to the Class of 2012 than high school graduates a generation ago. That’s because fewer teenagers in the 21st century have actually held jobs, something they’ll need to thrive or just survive for the next 60 years. In 1990, 32 percent of high school students worked. Since then, that percentage has dropped to just 16 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Many factors contribute to that decline. The recession forced young people to compete with suddenly jobless adults for jobs previously held primarily by teens and college students.
Thus, with nearly 84 percent of high schoolers lacking any job experience, they’ll need some kind of training. That means college, technical schools or apprenticeship programs. Grads still undecided about post-high school education should contact university or community college admissions and financial-aid offices, or the local Indiana WorkOne Center, immediately. Get a plan. Despite the high cost of college, people without post-high school education — on average — face a lifetime of lower wages and family difficulties.
n Prepare for family and married life, if that’s your intention. The Terre Haute community holds various resources for young people considering marriage or having children, from churches to family-planning organizations, and family counselors able to advise those on the brink of such important decisions. The need for a smart, thoughtful entry into that aspect of adulthood is illuminated by statistics from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released earlier this year. Vigo County tops the state average in childhood poverty, with 27 percent of kids under 18 living in that lean economic condition. Not coincidentally, the percentage of Vigo children living in single-parent households (36 percent) also tops the state average of 32 percent.
n Learn about money. It can’t guarantee happiness, but its availability — both in excess and in scarcity — can cause painful situations. The recession pushed thousands of Hoosiers into mortgage foreclosure situations and personal debt, and those possibilities haven’t disappeared. Talk to a financial planner — some credit unions offer those services at no extra charge. Even at the doorstep to your employment life, that insight could avoid great stress and strain for you and your future family.
Do all you can to ease that uneasiness you’re feeling today, and embrace the excitement.
Congratulations, Class of 2012.
Editorials
EDITORIAL: Grip that diploma, and embrace the challenges
High school grads have much to consider in 2012
- Editorials
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EDITORIAL: Waging the ‘readiness’ campaign
Almost every Hoosier who starts college intends to finish. Unfortunately, those who arrive on campus unprepared in key academic areas are far less likely to fulfill that aspiration.
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EDITORIAL: Insult to an independent press
Distrust of government secrecy has been elevated to an exceptional level with the disclosure the Justice Department covertly examined two months of Associated Press phone records to determine who leaked details to the AP about a foiled terrorist plot.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news: Dashing finish for the Sycamores
It’s always thrilling to see Indiana State University’s athletic teams do well in high-level competition, and two specific teams rose to impressive heights last weekend in the Missouri Valley Conference outdoor track and field championships.
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EDITORIAL: Better monitoring needed to prevent local environmental messes
The nasty, hazardous messes lurking in the community raise a bottom-line, red-flag question. Could these environmental problems have been monitored and, thus, prevented?
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EDITORIAL: Memo to U.S.A.: You can ‘SPPRAK’ just as we do in Vigo County
Our kids, truly, are ‘Making a Difference’
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Some words in praise of boring government — Indiana’s
A conservative Republican governor has super majorities in both branches of the legislature. One might suspect such one-party government leads to major changes in public policy. This did not happen in 2013 in Indiana.
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EDITORIAL: Doc’s prescient prescription
Viewed through a 2013 prism, Doc Bowen’s response to the AIDS epidemic looks merely prudent, routine.
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EDITORIAL: Education remains worth the cost
Within the next few weeks, each of the local colleges will have conducted graduation ceremonies. A few days later, a different Class of 2013 will don caps and gowns for commencement — the seniors at five Vigo County high schools. It is still a smart, worthy aspiration for those high school grads to replicate the achievement of those college students by earning a higher-education degree.
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EDITORIAL: Good news for downtown
For decades, it seems, downtown Terre Haute has been in the throes of change
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EDITORIAL: Overall, state budget step in the right direction
For average Hoosiers uninterested in political point-scoring, the budget crafted by the Indiana Legislature inspires only muted, if any, fanfare.
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EDITORIAL: The lessons of organ donation
The range of emotion surrounding life-saving transplantation of a vital organ is extreme. It is the ultimate “good news-bad news” scenario.
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READERS’ FORUM: April 26, 2013
• Pence’s tax cuts benefit wealthiest
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news
This does not qualify as a surprise in any way. But the Wabash Valley’s response to widespread flooding of recent days has been nothing short of impressive, even inspirational.
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EDITORIAL: Still waiting for the jobs reward
The forces in control of Indiana government for most of the past decade need to show some results to Hoosiers in one primary category.
Good-paying jobs. -
MARK BENNETT: Littered with irony: Why do people callously discard their trash, and who are they?
Though they aren’t acknowledged by the U.S. Census Bureau, there are basically two demographic groups of people … Those who would dump their old toilet on the banks of the Wabash River or a rural roadside. And those who wouldn’t.
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EDITORIAL: Doing the dirty work to clean up tossed trash
A first-of-its-kind, coast-to-coast project to remove litter from U.S. roadsides brought the Pick Up America crew through the Wabash Valley two years ago.
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EDITORIAL: Keep school security a local issue
The decision to provide armed security inside a schoolhouse should be made locally.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news
Indiana’s parks need your help.
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EDITORIAL: The return of terror
Emotions today remain strong and raw in wake of Monday’s terror bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
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EDITORIAL: A solution to distracted driving … stop it … now
You’ve got to stop. You know you do it. It’s a miracle you haven’t caused a tragedy already.
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EDITORIAL: ‘Women of Influence’: 2013 selectees have given much to their communities
For the second year, United Way of the Wabash Valley has teamed up with local sponsors to select and honor a group of women who have made outstanding contributions to their communities, professions and families.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news: A new honor for our veterans
A commendation goes out today to state Rep. Clyde Kersey, a Terre Haute Democrat who led the charge this week in the Indiana House of Representatives to pay tribute to the nation’s Purple Heart recipients.
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EDITORIAL: Shifting view on marriage
One could argue, as many have, that Sen. Joe Donnelly did the right thing last week when he dropped his support of government-sanctioned opposition to same-sex marriage. It wasn’t a radical move, considering most Democrats have now made the switch.
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MAX JONES: The American Newspaper: Changing? Yes. Dying? No way!
It happened again this past January when all those “looking at the year ahead” stories started popping up on Internet “news” websites and broadcast “news” programs. Under a provocative headline reading something like “Five industries/businesses doomed to tank in the coming year,” there it was, a prediction based on an unsubstantiated “expert” analysis that the newspaper industry will continue in 2013 to suffer its slide into oblivion.
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EDITORIAL: A chance to change our bad cultural habits
The sight of diligent, eager young people dragging trash out of the Wabash River wetlands is both inspiring and sad.
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EDITORIAL: Maintaining high standards
Standards
It’s the raging buzzword in education circles these days. Everyone insists that higher standards must be met. Anything less is, doggone it, unacceptable. -
Noteworthy in the news
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EDITORIAL: Crack down on dumpers
There is a reason it’s called “illegal” dumping. It’s against the law. And there is a very good reason illegal dumping is against the law.
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Season of Day 2s arrives
Calendars in Cincinnati contain one extra holiday — Opening Day, traditionally the first Monday in April.
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Congress fails to recognize problem of education costs
Who hasn’t gotten this message yet? The cost of a college degree has become unaffordable for a wide swath of middle-class America.
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