It’s high school graduation season: A rite of passage that’s about more than diplomas and tossing caps into the air. For high school seniors, it’s a huge — and often bittersweet — step into the rest of their lives.
NHPR wanted to know what local graduating seniors are thinking about this moment, in this day and age. We sat down with several Pinkerton Academy students who are each pursuing a different path after graduation. Their choices range from pursuing an immediate full time job, to heading off to college out of state, to combining higher education with a start in the military.
A few themes emerged from those conversations: These students are thinking a lot about the cost of college and beyond. They are clear-eyed about their futures. And they’ll disappoint everyone who wants them to stay in New Hampshire: They are ready to explore.
Making college ‘doable’
A four-year college degree can be a six-figure investment, so it wasn’t a surprise to hear that school debt factored into many students’ choice.
Amanda Buendia of Hampstead is headed to Sarah Lawrence College, a liberal arts school in New York, to study journalism, politics and public policy this fall.
“I really wanted to do something that's widely impactful. There's a lot of change I want to see happen,” she said.
Thanks to a merit scholarship from the college, Buendia will pay about $13,000 a year — a big discount from the school’s $80,000 annual tuition.
That makes higher education “doable,” she said, along with some money from her parents and a part-time job or two at school: “I don’t think it should be an amount of debt that isn’t manageable. I've seen people end up in a lot worse.
Justin Alexa, who lives with his family in Derry, is taking a different approach.
He’s headed to the ROTC program at Husson College in Maine to study pre-law. ROTC comes with scholarships, but Alexa is also enlisting in the Maine Army National Guard to help pay for school.
“This is a really great way where I can get a degree and not pay a lot of money for it,” he said. “And then if I decide I really like the military, then I can just make that a career. And if I decide I don't, I'll just do it throughout college and I'll have a degree to fall back on.”
Alexa is hoping to work with explosives or on Black Hawk helicopters. He knows he could be called to active duty — even while he's in college.
“I'm kind of nervous for when I get that call, if that call ever comes,” he said. “But at the end of the day, I know that . . . I've gone through training and I know what job I want, so . . . I'll be prepared for it if that ever comes.”
Keely Donovan, also from Derry, has known for a while that she wanted to go to college. And she cut her yearly tuition costs by $10,000 by choosing the University or Rhode Island over her first choice, the University of Vermont. Both schools offer the accounting and dietetics degrees she wanted.
“My mom has always been the type to just be like, ‘Don't worry about it . . . we're gonna figure it out,’ ” Donovan said. “She knows she's gonna take out loans . . . but I've always had it in the back of my mind (that) I don't want to put that on her.”
Getting ‘prepped’ in high school
The Pinkerton students benefited from opportunities outside the traditional high school classroom.
Aidan Tanguay studied a variety of trades in Pinkerton’s Career and Technical Education Program, the type of in-school training many state policymakers are looking to expand to keep skilled workers in the state and address the high cost of college.
Tanguay settled on welding and has been working a fulltime job at SL Chasse Steel in Hudson while going to school. His life won’t look much different after high school — except that without classes, he can move to the morning shift.
“It’s just getting prepped while you're in high school, just learning what it is going to be like when you leave,” said Tanguay, 18, of Auburn. “And I'm not worried about it one bit. It's just another day to me.”
Tanguay has essentially been living as an adult for a while. “I've been paying rent for a year now,” he said. “I've been paying all my bills. I buy groceries, all that.”
So for him, the cost of college didn’t make sense, though he is considering business classes down the road.
An internship with a Derry financial firm convinced Donovan to pursue accounting. Her teacher told her to see it as an opportunity to discover what she did — and did not — want to do.
“I feel like there's this stereotype about accounting where . . . they're just, like, sad,” she said. “They sit at a desk and they type, and then they go home, and I just, like. I don't want to be like that.”
Then Donovan learned there were more exciting possibilities – like working for the FBI.
Alexa knew he wanted to pursue ROTC in college because he went through Pinkerton’s program.
And another Pinkerton student, Patrick Cogan, plans to study sports communication and business at La Salle University in Philadelphia because of an independent study course he did freshman year with his high school’s communication director. That led to a job creating social media content for the school as well as some sports leagues.
Cogan, 18, of Derry, didn’t plan on going to college until this year.
“I already have the portfolio to get into certain companies, but . . . they want to see a degree,” he said. “I want to move up in companies and get higher managing roles, I need a college degree.
Branching out
Only one of the Pinkerton students we spoke to is staying in New Hampshire after high school. It’s not surprising that most want a change of scenery — but it’s not what state leaders and employers want to hear.
For Keely Donovan, the future accountant, studying at the University of Rhode Island means she's just minutes from the ocean. Justin Alexa could have done the Army ROTC program at the University of New Hampshire, but he toured the Maine campus and liked it.
And affordability wasn’t the only reason Amanda Buendia chose to pursue journalism at a college in New York.
“I've lived in New Hampshire my entire life, like most people that go here,” she said. “I just want to branch out. (The college) is really close to New York City, so there's just so much that I'll be exposed to that I would have never been in New Hampshire, so I'm excited for that.”
