Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The Final Count Down











On a beautiful early summer night in May, Mount St. Mary’s College held a graduation reception for their ’09 Weekend College graduates. The weekend program is designed for working adults to complete their undergraduate degrees while still maintaining full time jobs and family lives too. As a graduate of this program (Class of ’03, whoo-hoo!), I know how difficult it was to maintain all these aspects of my life at once. The grad reception was such a fantastic ending to long years of late night studying and sleepless nights.
Not only do grads and their families mingle with professors, councilors and fellow students, but each grad has the opportunity to give a short speech (like the Oscars without the annoying “get off the stage” music). I’m such a sucker for this kind of stuff and had to hold back tears as some students recounted their challenges, sacrifices and triumphs.
Anyway. I’m on the college alumni board so I offered up my mad-photography skills to shoot the event and give the grads the images at no cost. In these tough economic times, I challenged the students to find ways to give back to the school that gave so much to them. If one can’t afford to donate money, what about donating a skill, or one’s time? We’ve all got to find creative ways to be generous, even if our bank accounts can’t take the heat, so I used my photography super-powers for good. Here are a few snaps from the event.
-Catherine '03

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