Eleven Royal Early College High School students graduated with their associates degree from Lone Star College this evening, 15 days prior to graduating from high school. We are so proud of each of them for their hard work and for reaching this impressive milestone. Congratulations, graduates!
A special message from RISD Director of Advanced Academics and Early College High School Melissa Baker:
To my Royal ECHS Class of 2021:
This hasn’t been an easy road—but you made it. You have faced COVID-19, countless last minute schedule changes, building moves, demanding college professors, and had to deal with me as Mama Bear through all four years. To say that I am proud of each of you is an understatement. The accomplishment of earning your Associate’s Degree while in high school and juggling FFA, Athletics, Dance, UIL, NHS, volunteer work, jobs, and countless other extracurricular activities is unmatchable. If you can do this, imagine the possibilities that lay ahead of you. Simply put, if you can do this, you can do anything. I am beyond excited to see what your future holds.
My favorite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote these words to one of his students over a hundred years ago, and as you graduate, I want to share them with you:
“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
You are off to wonderful adventures; live them all and always remember your roots.
With Love, Mrs. Baker