Handing out Diplomas, Certificates and Degrees

Today my boss and I were finally able to give the inmates their official diplomas, certificates, and degrees. About 30 men graduated in May in the horticulture, food service, and culinary technology programs that are organized by Lenoir Community College. Since then, my boss and I have had to enter merit days for all of the achievements into the computer, as well as the name of the specific diplomas, and make lots of copies in order to have records for the inmates' transitional folders (which basically hold all the important documents they accumulate while in the prison system) and to have records for the educational programs department at Eastern. Many of the inmates had been asking my boss about their diplomas several times over the past couple of weeks and today they finally received them. I think it is really great that many of them have worked hard to achieve their certificates. Yeah, the cynics in the Department of Corrections will say that the inmates only took the courses so they could earn merit days (that will deduct days from their maximum sentence) and that may be the case for a few of them, but others of them are different. One inmate was smiling so brightly when he finally got to hold his official diploma from the college he thanked my boss and said he was as happy as a spring chicken. Another inmate said he was so glad he finally had the diplomas so he could send them home and show his sons that they should work hard and get an education. I liked those moments.

Tonight I'm attending ECU's chapter of Every Nation Campus Ministries with a friend of mine from Chapel Hill. It will be cool to fellowship with other Christians and to see what campus ministry is like at ECU.

Tomorrow after work I am leaving for Parris Island, S.C. to see my Dad and his family. I'm looking forward to seeing them, since I haven't seen them since Christmas and also because Father's Day is this Sunday.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to take my laptop with me to S.C., I'm not even sure if I'm have Internet access anyways. So if I don't blog any this weekend, I'll definitely make up for it next week. I hope all is well and I hope everyone takes the time this weekend to tell their dads how much they appreciate and love them.