It’s that time of year. The time when graduating seniors walk the line and walk out into the real world. It’s also a time when seniors can look to alumni, who have walked that walk and to share their experiences. It’s alumni like Kristen Miller, Kim Thomas, Donald Smith, Finley Woodard and Julie Childress whose Western reminiscences can guide seniors as they leave the Hill for good.

For many years, Jeff Younglove and Freida Eggleton have attended Western’s graduation ceremony. They have watched other parents’ sons and daughters walk down the aisle and receive their diploma. But this year is different, because they will be missing the ceremony in order to watch their own children graduate.

Commencement changes the lives of departing graduates. But the ceremony itself also changes. Many things about the ceremony have changed since Dero Downing, chairman of the College Heights Foundation, walked across the stage of Van Meter Auditorium to receive his diploma in June 1943.

When do we stop learning? I mean, do we really learn in college by paying tuition and showing up now and then? Do we get smarter by just being here? What does college stand for these days? Honestly, I’m a bit jaded having attended college for seven years now, but would like to ask you all what we are really learning? Are we learning about our lives or are we merely here taking someone else’s word for it all? As I look back I realize I have been seated in classrooms under fluorescent lights for four-fifths of my life.

When graduates get their diplomas on Saturday, many of them will have people in the audience cheering. Parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles and others will all be there to support the years of hard work put in to get a degree. When graduation is over, they will all need a place to eat, stay and shop, and Bowling Green businesses will be the ones feeling the effects.

I have a running joke amongst friends and family. It’s not fall out of your chair kind of funny, it’s the kind of thing that just sounds believable enough to be possibly true and might make your chuckle a bit. The joke is that on graduation day I plan to shake President Gary Ransdell’s hand and, with the kind of hops former Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug would be proud of, will turn a cartwheel on stage for all to see.

I typically don’t apologize, because, well, I’m never wrong But in the spirit of graduating and moving on, I figured I’d make amends – maybe to some people who don’t even know they need an apology. So here it goes, in absolutely no order of importance. • I’m not a great student.

Twenty-one and lost, I headed south across an imaginary line where churches and conservative opinions saturate the land I now call home. I had never experienced a culture shock as great as the transition from the streets of Cincinnati to the farms of Bowling Green.

Last spring I had my worst semester, grade-wise, ever. That semester I only had one A. The rest were Bs and Cs, which added up to a 2.8 grade point average. Yes, I know some of you would love to have a grade point average that high, but unfortunately I was raised with parents who feel that a B stands for “below average.