He did it!

Last day of virtual senior year

Yahoo, Reed's senior year is complete! He finished the year with 6 As and 1 B, a class rank of 107 out of 542, and a final GPA of 4.42. Very impressive!

While it would have been so much better if senior year had been in person, Reed did really well with virtual school. He only needed an occasional reminder about a missing assignment (though he would probably say the reminders were constant). This year he was invited to help in the Academic Support Center, where he and a teammate helped other students with their schoolwork. 

As COVID restrictions loosened up, and even more so after he was able to be vaccinated, Reed got to spend time with his pals, mostly playing spikeball. They even created their own spikeball league and held a draft party where they all dressed up and went through to draft and create teams for their league. 

We hosted a joint graduation party for him and Aly, who just graduated from Christopher Newport University. After going weeks without much rain, party day was mostly rainy but then cleared up pretty well by evening...still messed up some of our plans for decorating and where we'd congregate, but we made it work with multiple canopies in the driveway, and with our photo backdrop and food inside the garage. It wasn't glamorous, but it worked! We were so happy that Uncle Kenny was able to come out and spend a few days here to help us celebrate. 

Graduation day turned out perfect. A lot of drama went into the preparations and there were a lot of moving parts, but ultimately we were pretty much able to bring everyone we wanted to the graduation. Normally Freedom graduates at the Eagle Bank Arena at George Mason University, but they didn't host graduations this year. So the school planned the graduation for our football field. As much as it seemed parking and tickets would be a giant pain, in the end they weren't at all. Even the weather cooperated - a high of 78 degrees in mid-June is amazing! The school also live-streamed the ceremony so Dad and Lois were able to watch from home, as well as the Carpenters and the Kippers. That's something that definitely wouldn't have happened, pre-COVID! 

I think the class of 2021 will look back and fondly remember being able to graduate at their own school, rather than in some impersonal arena in a cookie cutter event where the next school rolls right in after your graduation is done. With so many kids graduating (second highest number in the county), they didn't spend long on speeches, they mostly got down to business. Reed hung around to take the obligatory photos with all the family, and went to hang out with some friends later on. 

It's hard to believe we made it through 13 years of school, and that Reed will be heading off to college in two short months! He has been an excellent student, even while not really loving any party of the whole thing, other than getting to hang out with his friends during lunch (back when they could do that!). I truly hope that at JMU, he will find courses that really interest him and eventually lead to a career path that will be fulfilling. 

We are so proud of you, Reed-o!