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Hocking College Graduates Celebrate, Look Forward
By: Susan Tebben | The Athens Messenger
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For landscape management graduate Emily Main, Hocking College was a step on a difficult road. But she expressed no regrets for her path in life.
"The easy road is not always the best one to take," Main told her fellow graduates as the keynote speaker at Saturday's morning graduation ceremony for the 2014 class.
Main was one of approximately 1,000 students that graduated in three ceremonies, held Friday and Saturday at the Hocking College Student Center. The School of Allied Health and School of Nursing held their ceremony Friday. Saturday morning's ceremony honored the School of Natural Resources and the School of Public Safety Services and the McClenaghan Center for Hospitality Training, the School of Arts, Business and Information Training and the School of Engineering Technologies graduated Saturday afternoon.
Many of Main's classmates would relate to her fears of moving on from college and deciding what to do next. She had already had those fears when she first entered college at the University of Toledo, and eventually went through six years there without truly finding a direction.
She told the departing students that her only regret was taking her education for granted. She likened her expectations for her first college experience to a moving sidewalk in an airport. She hoped her life's direction would just appear in front of her.
"One thing I knew I loved was creating things," Main said.
So when she found out about Hocking College's landscape management program, she said she found a new direction.
"Where else can you walk around in a pond as part of your class?" Main said.
The two-year program gave her a new perspective in life, including the opportunity to join Campus Crusades for Christ, for which she has decided she will work full-time after college.
For her fellow graduates, she said she didn't have much advice, but if there was one thing she had learned, it was that easy paths in life weren't always satisfying.
"The hard road is definitely the one worth standing on," Main said. "Don't write off the hard road."