Graduation Daze

THOUSAND OAKS — For the graduating class at Thousand Oaks High, the end of the school year followed a rhythm born deep in tradition.

There was the senior prom and the senior picnic. There was the distribution of yearbooks, senior awards and graduation gowns.

And there were big decisions about colleges and career paths, tough choices that go hand-in-hand with the senior experience.

But really, the seniors were just warming up.

For the Class of ‘97, the main event came last week when the graduating seniors took center stage before family and friends to accept their diplomas and join the ranks of educated young men and women.

For some, the reality hit with the force of a runaway train. And in the aftermath, class President Kristin Price was just one of the many students left feeling disoriented and disconnected.

Stepping off the bus from an all-night graduation celebration at Disneyland, Kristin said she suddenly felt out of place on the Thousand Oaks campus.

“I feel like I’m more of a visitor today than a student at my own school,” said Kristin, who will attend USC next year and study business and communications. “It’s not so much that I’m leaving Thousand Oaks, it’s the realization that I’m growing up.”

How quickly it happens.

“Up until now, we’ve just been taking the package and moving it forward,” said first-year Principal Jo-Ann Yoos, who found it hard to fight back tears during the last couple weeks of school. “But now there’s a finality to it. This is a

very different thing than they’ve ever experienced before.”

Getting Ready to Say Goodbye

At high school campuses throughout Ventura County, seniors are picking up diplomas this time of year, moving their tassels from the left side to the right and tossing their caps high in the air.

At Thousand Oaks, teachers and administrators set the tone early.

“Can you feel it yet?” asked English teacher Jim O’Brien, hosting the school’s Senior Seminar, the first of the year-end activities held in late April on a day the underclassmen were doing battle with statewide standardized tests.

“If you haven’t begun to feel it, if it hasn’t hit you yet, it will very soon,” O’Brien said. “Soon you’ll start to realize this wasn’t such a bad place to spend four years.”

Packed to the rafters in the school gym, the seniors fell silent. In this place, where the windows usually rattle with the roar of pep rallies and ballgames, there was not a sound.

It was as if the seniors had been pinned by the weight of those words, as if at last they realized the countdown was on.

“Your four years here are unlike no other four years in your life,”O’Brien said.

“The friendships established here, the relationships lost and gained, are going to be different than any others in your life. You have about seven weeks. Some of you probably have it down to hours, minutes and seconds. Make the most of it. And within that time, make sure you say goodbye to a few people.”

For many, the experience itself was a great adventure, a wild ride with an unknown destination.

Senior Meghan Carroll spent the last half of the school year weighing competing offers from Pepperdine University in Malibu and Chapman University, a small liberal arts college in Orange County.

Both have strong English programs, her chosen field of study. And both are close to home and rooted in religious teachings, also important considerations.

But it took a first-year full scholarship from Chapman--worth about $27,000--to tip the scales, an offer that came with only three weeks left in the school year.

“I’m kind of glad to have it behind me so I can enjoy the rest of the year,” said Meghan, a varsity cheerleader and student government commissioner. “It’s gone by faster than I ever thought it would. I can’t believe it’s almost over.”

A Mad Dash of Preparations

With less than two weeks to go before the big day, the madness started to take hold. Outside the student store, a wild scramble ensued as seniors bought graduation tickets, reserving seats for family and friends.

It’s not as though this was their first crack at tickets. Each senior got four automatically, and was immediately able to buy six more.

But for those with large families, or lots of friends, the only way to get more was to stand in a line that snaked out the student store, across the quad and over near the school’s metal shop.

There had been about 4,000 tickets available for graduation, but by this time only 300 to 400 remained.

Supply and demand ruled the day and wreaked havoc.

Walkie-talkies at the ready, teachers and administrators directed traffic, trying to keep some semblance of order. Inside the student store, Dean of Students Jean Gordon collected money while Assistant Principal Anne Hetu dispensed tickets like a blackjack dealer in a Las Vegas casino.

The demand grew so heavy that a second window was opened for those paying with cash or personal checks.

“I think we’ll sell out this year,” Gordon said, unwrinkling crumpled bills as the cash poured in. “I don’t think there’s going to be any room to move on graduation.”

Cal Lutheran-bound Matt Hoffman was among the first in line, having left his fourth-period class early to beat the noontime rush.

He had taken the better part of the year to decide what to do next year. There was never a question that he’d go on to college. Instead, the real decision was whether to go away or stay close to home.

*

In the end, he chose Cal Lutheran, hoping to extend his football career and watch his younger brothers play for the Lancers. But he also admitted he wasn’t quite ready to leave the nest.

“I guess I have to grow up now, but I don’t know if I want to,” he said. “I remember starting off, but that seems like a long time ago. I wish I could do it all over again.”

Later that day, more lines and more lunacy.

Hundreds of students descended on the quad as the school yearbooks were handed out, holding a place in lines that wrapped around the sidewalks and encircled a larger-than-life Lancer sculpted of old spoons and car bumpers.

For the seniors, the book was thick with memories of their last year in high school.

Around the quad, students leafed through the pages, exploding in laughter every now and then as they pored over the year in review.

On one bench, a group of senior girls focused on the senior tributes, the place where family and friends published childhood photos and offered parting words to the soon-to-be graduates.

Mary Martich saw the one published by her family and started to cry. It showed the 18-year-old senior as a 5-year-old kid on her first day of school. It said, “From your first day of school, you have been our joy.”

“I thought it was so nice,” said Mary, admitting that she had been weeping on and off for the better part of the week. “Everyone is writing sad stuff in my yearbook and it’s making me cry.”

Honors and Emotions Run High

Pass the tissue. By this time of year, nearly the entire campus is in meltdown mode. Seniors are sobbing. Parents and teachers have turned to mush.

“I’ve been crying for about a month,” said Francein Smith, on hand earlier this month at Senior Awards night to watch her daughter, Brandy, pick up scholarships to attend the University of Redlands.

“These kids are so amazing, I’m so proud of them,” she said. “But every time I think about it I start to cry.”

The awards night honors the top academic achievers of the Class of ’97. Hundreds of awards and scholarships were distributed by colleges, service clubs and other groups.

The Elks were there. So were the Optimists and Rotarians, the Trojans and Bruins, the Army and the Air Force. In fact, hundreds of thousands of dollars were doled out to help launch the seniors into the next phase of their lives.

Valedictorian Sarah Choi picked up a bundle, including the prestigious National Merit Scholarship and the UC Berkeley Regent’s Scholarship, to help finance her education next year and beyond.

A straight-A student with a grade-point average off the charts, Sarah had her pick of colleges, especially after scoring a perfect 1600 on her SAT and acing more than a half-dozen advanced-placement tests.

She settled on Berkeley after receiving the Regent’s Scholarship, which will pay for the bulk of her education and guarantee housing her entire college career.

“I have mixed feelings about it all,” said Sarah, who is thinking of becoming a doctor. “While I’ll miss my friends and I’ll miss the school, I’m going on to new experiences and that’s exciting.”

*

Among those presenting awards was Lois Conrad, a Thousand Oaks science teacher who also graduated a daughter, Christine, this year. In fact, she presented her daughter an award for her accomplishments in science and engineering. And on graduation day she planned to hand Christine her diploma, pushing her closer to a new academic reality at UC Santa Barbara.

“It hasn’t hit me too hard yet,” said Conrad, a 28-year veteran of Thousand Oaks High. “But I’m wondering how I’ll do when I’m shaking hands and giving Christine her diploma. She’s my youngest kid and this is it.”

Jeff and Donna Price know the feeling. For 17 years they have watched their only child, the senior class president, make her way in the world.

It’s hard letting go. And harder yet knowing that next year Kristin will be on her own to manage her life and her cystic fibrosis, a fatal disease that can easily run out of control if she’s not careful.

But that’s to worry about down the road. This night belonged to Kristin, no disease, no fretting about the future.

No one picked up more awards. She was named a life member of the California Scholarship Federation and the National Honor Society, and took home scholarships from the Daughters of the American Revolution, the California Federation of Republican Women and the National Charity League.

By night’s end she had an arm-load of certificates, plaques and scholarships--all the fruits of a successful school career.

“It’s a strange mix of emotions,” Donna Price said. “Here you have a little girl and you think this day is so far away. And then when it comes, you wonder how it passed so quickly.”

Ready or Not, Out You Go

The rites of passage of the senior year pile up during the last days of school. One day the seniors were taking final exams. The next they were cleaning out lockers and rushing into the gym to pick up caps and gowns.

That was the day it really hit home.

A circle of friends stood on the hardwood floor, exchanging a giant group hug. They held their robes tight in one hand, green for boys, white for girls. And they lamented the loss of something special, something they’ll never have again.

“Can you believe this?” asked Scott Whiting, voted everyone’s best friend in the yearbook. “This is not happening to me. Tell me this is not happening.”

*

Senior Katie Krim, bound for the University of Arizona, said it was hard to believe that in a few days her world would change, that high school would be a part of her past instead of her path to the future.

“This is crazy,” she said. “You work so hard to get here, you want it to come so bad, but then when it finally comes you’re floored by it.”

Wearing his flowing green robe, senior Michael Scotto tried to put it all into words at the school’s annual baccalaureate ceremony, held the Sunday before graduation at Ascension Lutheran Church.

A gifted songwriter, he has had plenty of practice. Earlier in the year, he had delivered a moving eulogy for Steve Nentrup, a popular shop teacher who died in March. And he had preformed several times during the year, including the Senior Seminar, where his rock ballads made the girls shriek.

But this was different. This was about pouring out raw emotion on a subject he hadn’t quite figured out, this ceremony called graduation that left him with more questions than answers.

“My whole life I have been trying to prove to my mother that I am an adult,” he told the intimate baccalaureate gathering.

“And seriously, who am I kidding? I remember her asking me how I felt now that I am graduating, and this little voice from inside me kept saying, ‘Tell the truth, tell her how you feel.’ But I found the words slipping out of my mouth, and before I knew it I had told her that I felt great. But the truth of the matter is I didn’t. I feel scared.”

Days earlier, Mike had tested the speech on school administrators, reducing them to tears.

Truth is, no one was sure he would make it this far. Troubled by problems early on in high school, he had a tough time before finally putting his academic career back on track.

He’s not sure what he will do next year, hoping to take time off to find himself. Really, that’s what his senior year has been about. While others have been charting career paths the way air traffic controllers track jumbo jets, Michael has been learning one of the most valuable lessons of all.

“I’ve already been though the hardest part,” he said. “Now all I’ve got to do is walk the line, accept my diploma and throw my hat in the air.”

*

Easier said than done. It took hours for the seniors to learn how to march into the football stadium. They practiced sitting and standing as a group. And they learned how to walk on stage, clutching the diploma with their left hand while shaking hands with their right.

By Thursday evening, they had it down cold. Hours before graduation, they paced the halls, squeezing in final moments with their friends. Some tried on their caps and gowns, using safety pins and bobby pins and Band-aids to hold everything in place.

Once seated in the stadium, seniors raised up one by one out of the checkerboard sea formed by their green and white robes. It took more than 20 minutes to hand out all 497 diplomas.

And when the ceremony was over, the seniors did indeed pull off their caps and fling them high into the air.

The rest of the night was a blur of celebration. Family and friends hunted down their favorite seniors on the main quad, a gathering so large there was barely room to move.

Afterward, the new graduates boarded buses for an all-night celebration at Disneyland. While the rest of the city slept, the seniors partied until first light.

“It doesn’t seem like we’re really out of high school,” said Jud Southwell, a popular varsity football player headed to UC Davis next year. “After we went through that whole ceremony it doesn’t seem any different. But I’m sure I’ll feel it at some point. Give it a week.”

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About This Series

“The Final Lessons: The Last Year of High School” has been an occasional series chronicling a year in the life of the senior class at Thousand Oaks High School. Over the past two years, similar series have highlighted school life in pivotal years for Ventura County students in elementary school and middle school. This final installment focuses on the seniors as they graduate and prepare to go on to college or careers.