COLUMN: Straight From the Hog’s Eye — Graduation brings tough decisions, fond memories

I know I’m not alone in feeling like this school semester just began, and now it’s drawing to a close. The flurry of local high school graduations has led me to reminisce a little bit about my own senior year and commencement.

First of all, it’s hard to believe that it’s almost been a decade since then. I had the unique honor of being part of the first graduating class of the new millennium.

I also remember a great deal of hubbub about Y2K, but never worrying much about it. I had a ton of academic demands weighing on my shoulders, the biggest of which was deciding where I would go to college that coming fall. I’ve also never been much of a conspiracy theorist.

Although I originally had attended high school in Lake City and fully intended to graduate from there, I completed my junior and senior years at the South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics. It was an opportunity I thought was too good to pass up. Needless to say, it more than prepared me for my first year of college, and I had another unique honor: that of hearing former S.C. Gov. John C. West speak at my graduation ceremony.

West, who served as governor from 1971 to 1975, made it his mission to make state government “colorblind” after a long history of discrimination. It says a great deal that I remember the speaker at my high school commencement far more readily than the one at my college graduation (I still couldn’t name that one off the top of my head).

On a sad note, West died in 2004, just months before my graduation from the University of South Carolina.

Speaking of good ol’ USC, my decision to go there was probably the most difficult one I made during my senior year, albeit one I was ultimately proud of. Furman had made me a very appealing offer, and I had always thought a great deal of that university.

Nonetheless, my inner reporter and editor won out. USC had a journalism school; Furman did not. That was one thing that made my decision easier.

On top of it all, many of my friends were either already at USC or planned to attend in the fall of 2004. I knew so many people at USC from both Lake City and the Governor’s School that my college experience merged seamlessly with my high school life.