Graduation Day
By Gerik Parmele
As Chris Bigger got his cap and gown ready for graduation he said he was a little nervous. “I am really not ready to get out of high school yet. But you have to move on in life. There’s a whole lot of opportunities out there.”
Later that day, as Chris walked across the stage to receive his diploma, he was not thinking about each step he took. He thought of only one step. A step from one part of his life to another.
“I completed one step of my life,” Chris said after receiving his diploma from Grand Island Northwest High School Sunday May, 12. Completing this passage in life, Chris said he feels more grown up and ready for what is next. Like going to college or joining the work force. Chris’ father, Rob, is also a graduate from Grand Island Northwest High School. Like his son Rob equated graduating as a life step. “You have a lot of unopened doors and unanswered questions,” he said. “Being on the same stone for the last four years and now you are stepping out on to a new stone.”
Besides both being graduates from Grand Island Northwest, Chris and his father worked as student managers for the athletic department. “He followed in dad’s footsteps,” Rob said about his son.
And now those footsteps will bring Chris to perhaps one of the biggest challenges of his life. Having been though this before Rob knows what is next for his son. The realization that he has some pretty big choices to make. Rob said that the decision of what to do after high school was one of the hardest challenges he had faced.
Gerik Parmele is the Photo Editor at the Columbia Daily Tribune and creator and editor of photocolumn.org. Prior to joining the Daily Tribune Gerik worked as a staff photographer at the Grand Island Independent until September 2005.
site: www.gerik.com
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