Funnyquote Friday

Bestowing an award of gratitude upon co-facilitator Gloria Mills at the NSTP's graduation ceremony on Wednesday, the thankful student remarked,

"On behalf of the A/C Repair class, 

I would like to thank you... for doing your job."

I am all graduated-out this week.  Not being one for such overt displays of pomp and circumstance, I found myself bearing with the 3+ hour ceremonies, replete with hot air of the metaphorical and literal varieties.  Both my primary school, which graduated off ≈60 sixth graders to junior high school, and the NSTP, which graduated 14 at-risk high schoolers from a couple skilled trade courses, held their ceremonies this week.  In fact, it's graduation season around the island right now: all the conference rooms at the Marriott resort are being booked up for big community celebrations, and ministers (clergy and government) and their deputies and staff and members of parliament are invited en masse and making showings every night of the week.  All in all, it would be rather lighthearted and refreshing, if not for the constant joyless reminder that of the three classes that graduated from Dr. William Connor Primary, over 50% of the students in the third and lowest-meriting class will be going into high school with a sub-first grade reading level.  They will not do well in the newly ramped-up vigor of their secondary school studies, and most will drop out around fourth form (equivalent of, say, 11th grade), about a year before preparing to take their CXCs (subject tests denoting a high school-level competence, similar to the Georgia State Graduation Test).

Apart from that, things are going smoothly enough.  My free time is more or less consumed with putting together the layout for the Serious Ting, a process which proves to be very labor intensive.  I've finally managed to overcome my hangups from last week, and am firmly on track at my desired pace of about 1 completed article per day.  Hopefully, this will allow for some leeway towards the end of the month for global formatting preferences, one of which I have in mind to suggest to the lead editor this weekend.

Pictures and video from the NSTP graduation at the end of the month, I'm thinking.