Barrington seniors preparing for farewells
Last Modified: May 31, 2012 02:45AM
Graduation is right around the corner for 750 Barrington High School seniors.
As the class counts down the days to graduation, slated for Friday at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Principal Steve McWilliams said he sees big things from the Class of 2012.
“They’re a very talented class,” McWilliams said. “They’ve got a very bright future, much like all our classes, and we expect a lot of great things from them (perhaps Principal McWilliams has not seen the job reports, especially for recent college graduates.)”
As seniors picked up their caps and gowns and signed each other’s yearbooks on the last day of school for seniors last week, they acknowledged that Barrington has prepared them well for the future ahead (I suppose it is important to think this, but it is also quite dangerous. Unless these kids have learned how to party like profligates, they are likely to have very close brushes with alcohol abuse when they enter college (as most of them will); One former BCHS valedictorian returned to the school grounds in November, 1972, and blew his brains out -- not so sure how well "Barrington" by which, the students really mean "Barrington Consolidated High School's teachers, administrators, fellow class mates, coaches" have prepared them for the future ahead - well, quite frankly IT HAS NOT! While the school has become much more racially diverse, this 60010 zip code is still the 7th highest per capita zip code in the country of zip codes with populations of 20,000+; These kids are not gonna be prepared to find poverty. One of Barrington High School's finest athletes and scholars, Brian Clay was murdered, gunned down on the sidewalk outside of his fraternity at UCLA, in the fall of 1968; Two of BCHS's graduates were raped, for years, by their older brothers. Both of them lived in Barrington Hills, a far more exclusive area than simply "the village" which truly is just a working person's town, and the way house prices were moving, it was only a working person whose family was doing fairly well BEFORE the housing market first went nuts. There are very few self-professed households which vote Democratic here; most people choose to get their news from a combination of the Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox News; there are no self-professed socialists in town (other than myself); there are a LOT of very nice and very new cars that park in the student parking lot at BCHS; an Indian (Eastern, no, not native) family bought a house just as half block from the high school for the son to live in, so he could sleep in a little longer in the morning rather that make the trek to and from campus; most of the graduates will go on to college / university / junior college (in excess of 95%, if the past is predictive of the future in this regards); most of the graduates will have taken golf lessons at one time or another; many of their parents will belong to one of the three very nice local private country clubs. I will suggest that what BCHS HAS prepared them for is to know how to swim the waters of the power elites of this nation, but swimming merely as life guards / gate keepers. Many of these graduates will believe that poor people are poor because they are lazy, that "inner city (black)" kids are dumb and can't read, and don't have any interest in education - and that they are all on some form of welfare (finding it more profitable that make babies into perpetuity than to go out and earn an honest dollar at some minimum wage job), the Mexicans are here only because they get such wonderful benefits from "the system" and all of them Mexicans will vote illegally -- FOR DEMOCRATS! .
“I think Barrington High School prepares us well to go off to college (especially so if you plan to frequently get wasted on drugs and / or alcohol -- but not so much so if you plan to take history courses where you will be introduced to some uncomfortable FACTS about this country's history, its "great men", all, of course, taught by socialist radical leftist LIBERAL college professors -- the extent to which this "new history" is taken seriously, studied, synthesized, or rejected out of hand will have a lot to do with accounting for their politics and their charity as they move along into adulthood, and adultery),” said Paige Powell, of Barrington. She’ll attend Miami University in Ohio and is undecided on a major. “I’m excited to be on my own more, be in a new place, with new people, new opportunities and start a new chapter (I don't know Paige, but I will assume she is sincere, and her statement actually speaks volumes about how she got on in the old place, with the old people, and the old (lack) of opportunities).”
Students cited Barrington as having taught them time management skills, organization skills, much-needed communication skills, how to use resources to help you and that there is always someone out there willing to help a struggling student.
“Barrington is full of opportunities and has been for all our lives, but at the same time, I feel we’ve lived a sheltered life,” said Courtney Valentine, of Barrington, adding she is nervous about being immersed in a different culture and community while attending the University of Illinois to study accounting and finance (A different culture and community while attending U of I? Okay. It's a culture of LOSING FOOTBALL TEAMS, which is a marked contrast with BCHS; it's a culture that finds that its varsity basketball coach whose teams have almost always won 20+ games for the duration of his tenure is not deserving of a job, because, he didn't do better on the national stage - ergo, Sweet 16 or you're done, coachie. It's a culture of corn cobs in the summer, where you don't have to go far at all to be in a totally rural surrounding where the people are all, GASP, WHITE! and most of them will NOT be going to college or university. True, they do admit black students at Champaign, and they even have a significant foreign student population, they even have MUSLIMS (sacre blueue! Jayzuz KeeRighst!), and there will be far fewer "liberal" Christian denominated churches to choose to belong too; all the diners will have Fox News on all their TVs all the time, the hatred of Obama will be expressed by the locals even more stridently than at the Hometown Barbershop in Barrington; most people WILL own guns; Lots of the natives (in this new cultural melting pot, known as the Champaign-Urbana area) will drive pick up trucks; there will be far more country and western radio stations than all others; you will still be able to listen to Rush Limbaugh any time you want, no problemo there, and your fellow accounting and finance students WILL have already embraced all the values, ideations, and myths of the accountants and finance folk that live in Barrington - about how oppressive are the tax rates, especially on the wealthy, how schools can't even teach kids how to make change any more (remember, 95+% of the 99.8+% of the kids that graduate from Barrington Consolidated High School WILL go on to college / university / junior college) and that the crappy education inner city kids get is the worst challenge facing America today (other than that we don't have enough kids studying hard sciences, computer science, math, engineering - which is a statement Barack Obama made, and for which he received an ovation, while speaking at the BCHS auditorium circa January, 2007).
Members of the Class of 2012 expect great things from themselves and their classmates (and in this, they will, virtually every last one of them, be very disappointed).
“With Barrington, it’s given us so many opportunities, we all kind of know our interests,” said Gavin Schmitz, of Barrington. He’ll attend Washington University in St. Louis and study neuroscience. “Whatever success people achieve, I hope happiness is the main one (one of the LAST things this community prepares you for is happiness - no, it prepares you to have an inferiority complex because of all your friends whose parents are so much better off than yours, of all the more splendid homes your class mates live in; the cooler summer vacations they get to take; the newer and fancier car their folks gave to them: even the community service the kids perform as part of various local church outreaches (going to the reservations to paint stuff for various indigenous Indian communities is one of the outreaches; of course, such outings are VERY well supervised, by the bestest of intentioned mums and paws).”
“I hope we’ll be a group of determined and motivated people that will be able to make a difference in the world,” added Lauren O’Keefe, of Barrington. She’ll study biology at University of Illinois (Lauren's identity is strongly entwined with her fellow class mates ... "I hope WE'LL be a group of determined and motivated people" ... but for what, Laruen, do you hope of for yourself. My apologies again. I do not know this young lady whose hope is so admirable -- I am thinking of my own self, at a parallel time in 1969, having decided that it was my fate to be drafted, go to Viet Nam, and be killed, just like my Uncle, 1st Lt James Raymond Hockett, not even seeing the point of deciding which school to go to - well, not entirely true, Harvard didn't want me, MacMurray State was too little, and U of I was too big ... a few weeks after graduation my father and I would go to visit Western Illinois University in Macomb, IL, play golf with WIU's legendary golf coach, Harry Musato, dad would buy me my first legal illegal beer at the Holiday Inn, and I was sold on the idea. I applied to WIU and was accepted. Then I became a blogger. In between, not much happened, except life).
Although nervous about leaving their friends as the Class of 2012 scatters across the country on its next journey, at least two students will still have each other. Twins Stephanie and Brad Fischer, of Barrington, will both attend University of Wisconsin-Whitewater to study business (KIDS, what a friggin WASTE - you can cop an MBA in a year, get some of them liberal arts into you, so you can convince a future employer that you know how to write coherently and speak with conviction confidently).
“I’m a little apprehensive about living on my own and having all those responsibilities (like WHAT? setting the alarm clock, learning where your classes are, doing your own laundry, living within a budget, remembering to call home - but only when mostly sober? remembering to do your homework? come on, if BCHS has not prepared you for the responsibilities of college (learning how to drink enough so that you don't get drunk and raped early on in your college career which has the effect of changing the way you view a LOT of things), but it’s a challenge I’m willing to accept and am looking forward to,” Stephanie said.
Brad said some of his best memories and friends at Barrington High School came from his time on the Cross Country team and he hopes to continue with a team in Whitewater (clearly a loner of a student - while there is something very exhilarating and rewarding in catching up and passing a runner you have chased in a cross country match until the last 200-or-so yards of the course, there is a reason the book The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner was written. Chet Knobe, who ran cross country with my my freshman year remained one of my best friends in high school, but I could barely name for you anyone else who was on the team. Hell, you spend most of your time looking at other guy's asses!) .
“I’m excited to live on my own and meet new people,” he said (that livin' on your own part can be a REAL eye-opening experience!).
Building relationships, whether with teachers, staff or students in classes and clubs was a big part of the high school experience for some, and taught students how to interact with all different kinds of people (white upper middle class students, black upper middle class students (not too many of those) hispanic middle class students, Asian and Middle-Eastern upper-class students, yes, to interact with ALL different kinds of people - 'cepting, of course, po' folk with Southern or hill billy accents), students said.
“They really help you grow as a person and help you find yourself and help you grow into what you want to be in the future,” Powell said.
While students are excited for their upcoming graduation, O’Keefe said it’s bittersweet.
“Now that it’s here, you don’t want it to end,” she said (no, you don't want it to end; and in at least some ways, especially with FaceBook and perhaps other social media, it never will end -- but, and there was only one of my high school class mates that I ever had ANYTHING to do with after I graduated from college (he stayed on at Princeton another 3 years - the time it took him to complete his Senior Thesis; what he did was make money playing bridge with his frat brothers, and have sex with the way too young daughters of the university administrators. WHO wouldn't want to remain in that life. BUT - and this has been so rewarding to me, so many of my HS class mates have remained true and loyal to what I characterize as a "60's ideal, a 60's ethic" meaning so much more than "sex, drugs, rock & roll:" SO many of my BCHS class mates are to the political left, and they DO stuff for people, to help the down trodden; they counsel young unwed mothers (Donna Littwin Weismueller) sometimes being the only non-judgmental voice that girl will hear, they work for world peace (Kit Gage, Barbara Fields), they minister in Russia and run PTSD clinics for combat veterans (Kathleen Harris), they maintain 500-year old farm houses in England and Sail Boat around the world (Wendy Effer), they are teachers (Leslie Bills, Wendy Parcher - from Streator, IL High School), they have remained married to the same person all these years, and have raised children who are very successful college graduates and community servants and have presented them with GRAND CHILDREN which are the delight and joy of their grand parents' lives), and thus, if you keep in touch, it doesn't have to end, it can grow, it can flower, it can prosper, it can change the world! .
And while the future may seem scary, the students are confident they are ready for the next chapter (well, the only difference between the next chapter and the one just closing is that they don't have to go to class, and their folks won't be there to assure that they get up on time, have breakfast, and are out the door in plenty of time so as not to be late for class).
“It’s going to be a little bit scary diving into new opportunities, but I feel confident,” Valentine said. “I feel prepared and ready to go on to the next four years of college even though it’s scary (kid, academically, it ought to be a snap, except for the part about history ... basically it's all mo' duh same ol' samizdat - go to class, take notes, read your books, do the assignments, if you're interested, talk with the prof, it's just that NOW, when you get involved in extracuricular activities, you are either doing it for an EMPLOYMENT RESUME, or you are doing it for yourself - let me STRONGLY and in no uncertain terms suggest this: Do it for yourself; expand your horizons; take every opportunity you can to talk with kids who are VERY much different from you, and get to know the local merchants, and support them to the best extent you can; find out HOW the locals live. It is likely to be QUITE an eye-opener, once you get past the ones that work for the university.).”
Copyright © 2012 — Sun-Times Media, LLC
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