The community birthday

By Anita Shanker
Western Hills High School

June 19: Move-In Day. My family and I spent the morning hauling luggage up to my new dorm room on Bellarmine University’s campus. The Governor’s Scholars Program had begun.
While we unpacked the gear that would sustain me for five weeks, I met my roommate. She seemed nice, but my terror at having to live with this stranger couldn’t be squelched with one meeting.
Later in the day, the crowd of mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and other assorted relatives and friends was gone. An uneasy silence fell over campus. All that was left was us scholars, 358 strangers huddling together in a strange place. My thoughts turned to my birthday, which would pass while I was here, without the laughter and hugs of family and friends.
I wasn’t really feeling sorry for myself. Acceptance to Governor’s Scholars, a summer residency program for high-achieving students entering their senior year of high school, was a great honor. I was just feeling a little lonely.
Despite GSP’s efforts to make scholars feel welcome, many others with summer birthdays shared my anxiety. But the staff makes sure that birthdays spent away from home are not birthdays forgotten. During Community Meetings every Monday morning, GSP Executive Director Aris Cedeño recognizes the week’s birthday-scholars and leading a brief but jolly song in their honor. For me, the recognition from over 350 people made my pulse pound, but it also made me feel akin to this crowd of scholars.
Kelly Ren, a scholar from Henry Clay High School in Lexington, had her birthday 11 days into the program. She didn’t make many friends during the first few days of GS, and her initial anticipation turned to fear. But she ended up having a great birthday. She took the initiative to make sure she had it all: cake, balloons, and pizza. Here, scholars are free to make decisions about their own happiness – to party or not to party, that is the question.
Sometimes parties aren’t possible. Isaac Potter of East Ridge High School in Lick Creek had his birthday on Opening Day, so he spent it hauling luggage with his family and making awkward introductions to strangers. He’s not bitter about the bad timing, but in retrospect that he wished his birthday had fallen later in the program so he could have spent it with all his new friends.
Noah Wiersema, of Central Hardin High School in Elizabethtown turned the bad birthday karma to his advantage: “It’s a great ice breaker. ‘Guess what? It’s my birthday.’”
Cedeño said that in his 20 years of experience with the program, only one scholar dropped out because she didn’t feel comfortable spending her birthday away from family. But, he added that GSP was a community.
“When one suffers, we all suffer. When one is happy, we all are happy,” he said. “We shouldn’t be afraid to spend holidays elsewhere – out of our comfort zones.”
Reflecting on the importance of his new friends and community, Dakota Waldecker, of Meade Co. High School in Brandenburg, said he felt disappointed because he couldn’t spend his birthday with his friends and family at first, but became excited after seeing the way the community treats birthday-scholars.
“Friends make a difference,” he said.”They make experiences meaningful.”