Lancers ready for next step Lancers ready for next step (June 04, 2004)

Three graduating students share memories

By Diana Reynolds Roome

Community has been on the minds of many of the 357 seniors who graduated from St. Francis on May 29. They are facing that bittersweet moment when they say goodbye to home, school, and the Mountain View community and hello to a new world.

The idea also came alive in a new way for the seniors, as they focused on the theme of community in their final year as part of a four-year course in values that also covered integrity, respect and compassion.

Here, three students share their memories of the community they are leaving behind and their plans for the future.

Chris Perry

Chris Perry's voice is well known around town. As a yell leader, he pressed it into service to rouse student spirit, running the student cheering section during this memorable year when the St. Francis football team went undefeated.

"My parents went to old Mountain View High School, which got knocked down, and they talked about the spirit there. I wanted to encourage the same spirit," said Perry, who is headed to UC Davis to major in political science.

As someone who has already been flexing his political muscle, he has no problem getting up in front of 250 students or even the city council, and telling them what he considers the right thing to do. He's been out there speaking about equal representation, historical preservation, and reducing drug and alcohol use among students. As a member of the city's Youth Advisory Group, his opinions have also been heard (without the decibels) in some of the articles that appeared in Teen Voice.

He feels strongly about social issues and was very glad he had the chance to study social justice and world religions at St. Francis. Though Perry is clearly a mover and shaker, he thinks he may ultimately go into law rather than politics.

Nicole Ng

Nicole Ng expresses what most graduates feel as they prepare to toss their caps in the air and throw off their schooldays -- excited but sad. Before starting at Princeton University in the fall, she will be heading to Virginia Beach to train for the under-21 national field hockey team. She has already traveled as far afield as Holland and Australia playing for the U.S. Junior National under-16 team.

"It's nerve-racking as I don't know what to expect, but overall I feel pretty good," said Ng of embarking on this new phase of life. Reaching out to new people has been one of her chief aims while at St. Francis where, as a member of the Student Council, she helped plan activities that brought staff and students closer together.

"The thing I took out of my experience here was relationships -- not just students but teachers. One of the things I'm most proud of was being able to increase the sense of community," she said.

In her recent speech at Senior Awards night, she spoke about how spirituality can mean doing positive things in the world and challenging oneself to be a better person. It can also mean something as apparently simple as "being able to look at someone and get to know them."

Though Ng will be majoring in biology, people are so important that she's thinking about becoming a doctor -- specifically an OB-GYN where she will be part of the ultimate expression of life by birthing babies.

Michael Redding

For ASB president Michael Redding, a graduation day speaker, these themes have become as important as what he learned in math, science and English.

"In the end it won't matter how we do in high school, it'll matter who we are," said Redding, who also spent much of his four years acting as somebody else in school theatrical productions. "It's not so much the actual knowledge as the process of acquiring it, and learning how to do that."

Attending school rallies, working on the spirit commission, and talking to younger kids about high school as a student ambassador for information nights was part of that learning. His work for the Association of Catholic Student Councils teaching leadership skills to seventh and eighth graders developed his own sense of leadership and confidence with public speaking.

Redding's interest in reaching out was also sparked by a class on world religions. The choice of political science and sociology, which he aims to study at Notre Dame University in Indiana, was influenced by such classes, he said. He looks forward to traveling during his student years, particularly to South Africa where he hopes to do community service.

Thinking of travel makes him appreciate even more the familiar joys of Mountain View: "It's a nice community -- you can walk around at night. And I'll miss Colonel Lee's Mongolian barbecue on Castro."

As all the St. Francis graduates prepare to say goodbye to the life they have known for the past four years, they might well echo Redding, speaking of his speech shortly before the graduation ceremony: "I want to say the right thing. I want to end it on a good note."

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