Focus on Education: Congratulations To All Students By: Anthony Pellegrino

High school is now a memory for you graduating seniors. The party is over. Now the realities of life will begin to sink in. No more mom catering to your every need, and no more free time to hang around with friends. You have to go out and hunt down your future.

Some of you will further your education. Good Luck! When you finish, please come home to the CNMI. We need your newly acquired knowledge and your youthful vision to chart the CNMI onto a new and more realistic course. As the older members of the community who helped create this unusual commonwealth retire, it is you who must replace them with new insights and great courage for the multitude of problems facing us.

To the graduating seniors not continuing their education, a special good luck. Jobs are scarce both in the government sector and in the private sector. Unless you possess special skills or unusual qualifications, obtaining a job is going to be difficult. There are always menial unskilled jobs awaiting for you. My advice is take them and see what working for a living demands of you. Discover how limited education limits your salary and progress in the work field. When you finally become discouraged, gather up your dreams and visions and go to school for further education or consider joining the military. Let me relate a personal incident which hopefully will help you.

When I graduated from high school I thought I knew all about life so I decided to go to work. For two years I bounced from job to job finding that instead of moving upward, I only moved side way in the work place because I had only a high school diploma. Finally in desperation I decided to go to college to escape the vortex I had become entrapped in.

Thanks to my loving and understanding parents who gave me free room and board but no tuition money, four years later I managed to graduate with a Bachelor of Education degree. After teaching for two years, I attended another university and earned my Master of Liberal Arts degree. By then I had a wife and a child which made studying more difficult. But that decision at twenty years of age has made all the difference in the world to me.

To you young graduates, look ahead. You are still young and are allowed choices and mistakes before you settle down. Don’t let any one rip apart your dreams or discourage you from striving towards your ambitions. It is your life and you must control it. If you don’t someone else will and you will not enjoy the results. A special thanks to all the parents who have guided and molded the lives of these young people. It has been a long and difficult path giving them physical subsistence.

But most of all you gave them emotional subsistence, or they would never have made it to the finish line. But please don’t stop there. They still need your encouragement in making right decisions. Your experience and love will guide them.

It has been estimated that 80% of children in elementary school have a high self-esteem. In junior high and in high school it drops to almost 20%. Self-esteem then further drops to about 5% for graduating students! Your continuous love and support will help them to maintain a high self-esteem.

To the parents whose children are still in school, keep up the motivation to learn. Stay close to your child’s education. Don’t be fooled by their physical appearance or age. They are still youngsters needing mom and dad’s nurturing more than ever before.