Graduation Season/Diploma pressure/Next steps....

'Tis the season! As I said in an earlier blog post... we hold our breath, cross our fingers and pray our kids make it through this season in one piece! But probably the bigger piece, the forever-after piece, is the actual graduation, diploma-in-hand piece! There's also that closure piece. Both for your kids and for you! First, your kids. Whether it's high school or college this is an emotional time made up of the "last" times, but it's also a time when your kid is tying up loose ends; Paying library fines, parking tickets, being sure they've got all their work completed and tests taken and passed, room keys turned in,....that diploma is in the balance. Parents EXPECT you to receive it come graduation! I don't know about you, but I sure remember feeling the pressure. That "expectation" pressure from my parents. I know my kids felt that pressure from us too. Aside from the expectation about the diploma and actually graduating, your kids are thinking about what all of this means,: how they won't see all of these people again in this environment, how it's all going to change... everyone handles this in their own way. Some kids are thrilled to be finishing up, to be moving on to the next step, never to return to this high school or this college; others are nervous as heck, it's the big unknown out there! They're also thinking about next steps:
moving
getting a job
starting a job
making ends meet
finding an apartment
a roommate
paying off those loans....Maybe as a parent, that's optimistic....maybe they're really just thinking about the "immediate stuff," about the goodbyes or the "how are we going to make this relationship work being so far apart?" or trying to figure out when they'll all be together again, or how to fix that hole in the wall of their dorm room so they get their cleaning deposit back, or "what do I do with all of this junk that I don't want anymore?" or "how do I talk my parents into coming to help me move out?"

Are they feeling the actual pressure of receiving the diploma? Do they want to move on? Are they thinking about immediate next steps? Or are they thinking more long term?

What were you thinking about then?
Is it that different now?