The last time I wore a cap and gown and endured a graduation ceremony was in May of 1993 to accept an associate’s degree in liberal arts.  It was a ruthless calculation on my part.  I wanted to spend the summer in Argentina.  My grandparents would give me a check as a graduation gift if I invited them to attend.  I needed the cash.

When I earned my bachelor’s degree, I didn’t walk.  I borrowed my boyfriend’s cap and gown and snapped a photo, then went to work in a greenhouse.  I planned on going for my Ph.D. some day,  so this graduation ceremony didn’t mean anything.  I preferred to spend the day working with plants.

When I earned my master’s degree, I didn’t walk again.  I had been accepted into a Ph.D. program. 

But when I earned my Ph.D., I opted yet again to forego the pomp and circumstance.  

By that point, I was married and jaded.  I felt I had seen academia for what it was — a trap where a woman would suffer in her family for caving to the pressures of her department, or, if she chose to honor her family, would be marginalized and eventually discarded by her department.  I had proven to myself that I could do the work, and instead chose to turn my back on the ceremonies and direct my attention toward tackling the next challenge — a fulfilling life where my husband and I charted our own course without jobs.  On the day of my Ph.D. graduation, we put in our garden.  

My disdain for the ivory tower followed me into my life, and there’s no denying I enjoyed the academic freedom that came with it.  I researched and wrote based on my interests.   Had I joined a faculty someplace, I don’t think I ever could have generated the creative output that has made my career thrilling.  I somehow forgot about the years of schooling that empowered me to make that choice.

With an experience like that, it was easy to decide to home school my children.  I felt learning should come from within, and my job was to be their guide.  I helped them develop routines, we struck a balance between daily discipline and total freedom to explore.  

And then Corey landed in our home, a biracial kid in white upstate New York who had gone through a serious rough patch.  We had known him since he was sixteen, when he started dating Saoirse.  At eighteen, he had no high school diploma, and he was riding a bus an hour into Albany each day, washing cars at a dealership in every kind of weather.  He would come to stay with us on his days off, asking me to help him with his hands, which were red and pealing from the toxic chemicals the dealership required he use on the upholstery, without providing any protective equipment.  

When the wall of the pandemic came down, Bob and I asked him to move in with us.  We offered him our spare room and told him that if he quit his job in Albany, we would employ him on the farm. But he had to get his diploma.  We worked out an arrangement where he did lessons with me and through Outschool in the morning, then worked at the farm in the afternoon. 

I figured, after a year, he could pass the TASC test, the New York State equivalent of the GED at that time.  The following spring, I enrolled him in an online test prep program.   He was bright, did his schoolwork well, and I had every expectation that he’d breeze right through.

Except he didn’t.  I assumed he simply didn’t have test taking skills.  I sat down beside him one day, with my Ivy League degree and college GPA of 3.9  and demonstrated how to take a simple literature test.

Fifteen minutes later, I had gathered every book that still remained from my time as an English major.  I was madly googling every answer.  An hour later, this Cornell Ph.D. had managed to score a paltry 80% on the high school literature test.  And that score was only because I looked everything up. I read through the test and constructed a reading list of every piece of literature referenced.  I am a voracious reader, but I had read none of them.  I got summaries of those books, then took another practice test.  This time, none of the books referenced in the first test were there.  It was an entirely new body of literature the test taker was supposed to know.  I kept going into more and more practice tests, trying to build a simple reading list for Corey to prepare, waiting for simple data saturation — where I would start to see the same titles referred once again, knowing I’d completed the list.  But the list just kept growing.  The works of literature he was expected to know to pass the exam was, in my estimation, insurmountable.

And that’s when reality started to set in.

I walked out of high school with a diploma because I stayed in high school.  I stayed in high school because it was the easy route.  Mom and Dad made sure there was food on the table, that the house was warm, that there was ample light to study, that there was a peaceful environment in which to do it.  I never had to worry about my brother’s safety, or my safety, or my parent’s safety.  When I didn’t understand my homework, they would sit down and help me.  Whenever I did a piece of writing, they would sit and listen.  When I went to school, that kind of home support made me a star pupil.  If I told a teacher I didn’t understand something, the teacher would question their own teaching methods.  They would work to re-explain, because, of course, it was understood that I was diligent and a hard worker.  No one ever accused me of being lazy or failing to pay attention.   I easily received any extra attention I needed, and never felt shy or stupid.  

But when a child might be foregoing food for their siblings, or doesn’t have someone home to help with the school work, finds themselves moving every six months, or doesn’t even know who to ask to tap into the body of knowledge that every other high school kid gets spoon-fed, these things don’t happen.

And they get to the age of eighteen and wind up, like Corey, without a high school diploma.  And then, I was now learning, getting that diploma was a whole lot more difficult.  The TASC test was way harder than anything I confronted as a college-tracked A-level, top-tier high school student. 

I remember the morning of that discovery, standing up from my attempt at Corey’s practice literature test.  I tried to act calm in front of him, but then I left and sat down in the woods.  Bob came to find me.  I was sobbing to the point of hyperventilation, fearing for his future.  He was smart.  He was kind.  And the best he could hope for was washing cars and burning his hands on the chemicals.

Bob just held me until I calmed down.  Then we put together a resource list of every customer, every friend, every personal contact we could think of who might be able to help us find a better way to help Corey get a diploma.  I called the local schools.  I wrote to politicians.  I found  a list of every BOCES/Vo-Tech center in the state of New York and began calling them, one by one, wiping my eyes between calls, trying to contain my fear, despair and rage.  And I’ll never forget the moment Corey came and leaned across the counter beside my desk.  

“Shannon, you don’t have to put yourself through this.”

His words were so simple.  I put the phone down at stared at him, eyes wide. 

“Why would you even say that?”

“Well,” his voice was gentle, as he broke a simple reality to me.  “It’s just the way it is for someone like me.”

He believed those words.  

And that scared the hell out of me.

“That’s not how it is for most people,” I explained.  “This should be available to everyone.  And that means you.”

He began to cry.  “But why would you do this?  I don’t deserve it.”

He believed those words, too.

And now, my tears were flowing once more.  “Because, Corey, I believe you are an amazing human being, and I believe the world needs you to have an education, because you’re going to do amazing things.”

He slipped away and went to the farm to do chores, and I picked up the phone again.

Finally, one of our customers told us about an adult education program that could help him with a series of accredited online classes.  We drove to Elmira, New York, where they gave him a qualifying exam.  He passed, and enrolled in the program through the kindness of the director (because it wasn’t available in our region, and they had to administer it to him without compensation). He earned his degree in less than eight weeks, and was accepted into SUNY Cobleskill’s diesel tech program.

The story of his survival there, as one of three minorities in a sea of whiteness in his department, is his tale to tell.   But he stuck with it.  He didn’t let anyone talk him out of it.  He became a campus guide, and an ambassador for EOP.  He became the tutor for his department.  He found scholarships and won them.

And last Friday, on the eve of his graduation with his Associates degree, Bob and I got an invitation to see him get a special award.  It was not for having the highest GPA.  It was better.  It was a citizenship award, given to someone who managed to achieve good grades, while finding time to help others and working to make a difference on the campus.  

We rushed to finish all our prep work at the cafe, then drove down to the campus.  I, the woman who refused to attend any ceremony to acknowledge a silly education, sat in the auditorium and wept.  

I thought of every graduation ceremony I spurned, because I found them trivial and a waste of my time. 

And I hated myself for that. 

They were a trivial waste of my time because everything in my life made it easy for me to take each of those walks across the stage to get a diploma. 

Corey sat down in the front, and I thought of everything he endured to get to this point: hunger, near homelessness, shunning, racism, self-loathing, destitution, the loneliness he experienced after he and Saoirse broke up and he found that he was neither black enough nor white enough to mix easily on the college campus.

But he kept studying.  

And he did it.  

He put on that cap and gown, and they hung chords around his neck to celebrate his good grades and his campus achievements.  

And on Saturday, he walked across the stage and earned his associates degree.

And this fall, he will begin working on his bachelors.  

He has learned a lot.  And on that journey, he has become one of the greatest teachers I have ever had.  He showed me what determination can overcome.  He showed me what it means to be resilient.  He showed me what it means to try to navigate this world without an education, and that I took my own schooling for granted.  I will never do that again.  

 

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