Graduation Matters to the students

Editors note: This is the final installment in the Graduation Matters series.

Previous articles furnished an overview of the initiative, examined it from a parent standpoint, told what the business community is doing to show that graduation matters and gave some information from an educator's point of view. This week's article will look at why graduation matters from the perspective of two students, one who dropped out and one who almost quit.

Previous articles made note of some of the things that can lead a student to drop out of school and some of the consequences of that action. Students often drop out of school as a result of poor choices that compound themselves into seemingly insurmountable problems. At least that's how things seemed to Randi Cooper by the time she got halfway through her junior year.

Cooper was a straight A student until she made the choice to begin drinking; a common poor choice made by teenagers. She remembered it very vividly, "It took my soul right then and there," she said. That led to running with the wrong crowd, finding other ways to "get high," and getting in deeper and deeper.

In the process Cooper began skipping more and more school. When she was there she felt as though, "principals were my worst enemy." She continued to make the wrong choices and carried her illegal activities into the school, only showing up to get rid of something or get something, and it wasn't an education. Finally, she got to the point where what she was doing was more important than anything else in her life. She dropped out of school.

For the next four years Cooper lived on the fringes of society. She "played the game." She ended up being one of those statistics mentioned in an earlier article that said dropouts are eight times more likely to be incarcerated. After being locked up four times, in treatment centers three times and even landing in a psychiatric facility, Cooper realized that those principals weren't her enemies.

"Now, looking back, I can see that they were trying to help me," she said. Even though Cooper obtained a GED shortly after dropping out, she said it didn't do her a lot of good. People just don't look at it the same as a diploma, she said. Employers see that as meaning that you are not responsible, a quitter, that you won't follow through with things, Cooper said. Counselors and administrators tried to warn her of that, but "I thought they were just lies," Cooper said.

She wishes she had listened, "It will take me years to rebuild what I have broken down," Cooper said. "If I would have graduated, I would have gone to college." She is thinking of that now. Cooper cautions students to "Stay in school, do the best you can. Don't get mixed up with the wrong crowd, they don't care," she said. "If I had taken school seriously -- there's no telling where I'd be right now."

Some students take school seriously, but unforeseeable circumstances change things. That's what happened when Cheyenne Beasley began to struggle in school. She had to move in with her grandmother and that didn't work out well, so she found herself on her own at 16. She was couch surfing from house to house, hanging with the wrong crowd and her school work suffered because of absences during her sophomore year. "I just kind of messed up," Beasley said.

Then she got pregnant. At that point she was four credits behind schedule to graduate and about ready to pack her bags. "I knew I had got myself into a tough situation," she said. She knew she had to do something different. Beasley began an intensive study program to make up her lost credit and not get any further behind. She stayed in school and worked hard right up to the time her daughter was born.

Even then she worked in a "home bound" program to keep up with her studies. She praised the help she has gotten from the staff at the school. Beasley said "home bound was pretty helpful, but it was tough." Still on her own, Beasley landed a job for the summer at Moore-Few Care Center and kept studying.

She saved her money, bought a car and got her own place. She still works there part time and carries a full course load, and the experience has given her the desire to pursue a nursing career. All of her hard work is beginning to pay off. Beasley will graduate as part of her class, and she has been accepted into the University of Missouri-Kansas City to pursue her career.

She does it for herself and her daughter, "My daughter is my big ambition," she said. "Graduation does matter," she said. "I don't want to think of where I would have been if I hadn't come back." she said. All of this has "made me who I am today, it made me mature a lot." Now Beasley doesn't make those bad choices.

She says she is stronger, more self reliant. It has made her feel better about herself. "It's the smartest move I could have made for me and my daughter," she said. Graduation does matter, and she wanted other students to know that. She urges them not to make poor choices that may affect them for a lifetime. "Worry about your education as much as you can," she said, "try to keep a hold of your ambitions and dreams."