Graduation 2018
On Friday May 25th, sees the culmination of twelve years of hard work for 68 of our senior students. The TIS Class of 2018 is the 10th graduating class, and the largest. They have been accepted to over 150 universities from all around the world and have been offered approximately 5,000,000 MOP in scholarship money to date.
Starting at 5:00pm in the MUST Auditorium, these Grade 12s will gather and then walk across the stage to collect their graduation certificates in front of their parents, friends, teachers and the greater TIS community. It will be a moment of pride for each one of them, but also a moment of pride for all of us as well. This is why we celebrate graduation so publicly; a student cannot make it through alone, it is a shared journey. We will be the ones who are smiling and clapping as their names are called, but they will be looking right back at all of us in the audience who have joined with them to help ensure that this day was reached. And so, together, we mark this occasion with all the pomp and circumstance that it deserves.
For the students, this will feel like end of a road; a goal that has been reached. But we know, and soon they will too, that this is a goal, but not THE goal. It is a checkpoint; a marker along the path of life that must be reached and then passed by. This is not the end, this is the start of the next section. There is still the tough transition from protected home life to the freedom of adulthood. They will need to be shown how to survive with fewer safety nets, less frequent parental involvement, and an unknown group of peers to relate to. We will have to allow them independence, while still providing support when needed. We know that some lessons can be taught in advance, while some must be experienced firsthand. We will be there to advise and direct, but also to watch and listen, and occasionally to comfort. We have the benefit of having gone through this transition ourselves, but they have the benefit of excitement, energy and the anticipation of the unknown.
I hope that everyone who can will come to the graduation on Friday. It’s just as important for us to be together and reaffirm our commitment to the students as it is for them to reach this point. Let us show them all that we have been with them until now and we will be with them in the future as their journey continues.
