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35 UW-Rock grads look to future

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Kathy J. Price

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William C. Douglas

JANESVILLE — The economy loomed in the background of a joyful UW-Rock County commencement ceremony Thursday.

Following are some scenes and thoughts from the ceremony. All 35 graduates received associate degrees, except for this first one:

-- William Douglas received his bachelor’s degree—the first graduate in the program that allows students to get electrical engineering degrees through UW-Platteville without ever leaving UW-Rock.

Douglas lost his job as a design drafter at Beloit Corp. in 2000. He has not started looking for work yet, and he’s worried.

“I don’t know what to expect,” he said. “I think it’s going to be ugly out there.”

But Douglas has the perspective of someone who graduated from Blackhawk Technical College in 1984—during the last deep recession.

“I’ve been through this stuff before,” he said.

-- Tye Gustina of Beloit, a 2004 graduate of Beloit Memorial High School, has a plan for dealing with the job market: He’ll join the Navy this summer.

“Jobs are hard to come by, especially good ones,” he said.

-- Student speaker Kathy Price of Beloit is a minister and a 45-year-old mother of five. She said going back to school challenged her beliefs and changed her life, for the better.

Price plans to get a degree in communications at UW-Whitewater and then work in patient advocacy.

In an interview before the ceremony, she recalled not getting a job because she lacked a degree. She encouraged other women her age to take the plunge and go back to school.

“If it never benefits me financially, it will benefit me as a person,” she said. “But I look forward to it benefiting me financially.”

-- Brian Slawson came to UW-Rock after graduating from Big Foot High School in 2006.

Slawson plans to produce a movie over the next six weeks.

“Taking the art classes (at UW-Rock) changed my life,” Slawson said.

Art professor Michael Julian pushed Slawson to think about his art, “to not just make art that looks beautiful or pleasing to the eye but to have some sort of reason behind it,” he said.

After the film, Slawson will continue his work as an assistant wedding photographer with Ideal Impressions of Lake Geneva. Then he’s headed to UW-Milwaukee.

-- Math lecturer Ann Trow, who received a teaching award, said her students gave her M&Ms with the words “Thanks for teaching, Ann” imprinted on them.

“I’m never going to eat them,” she said.

-- Michael Perry, author of “Truck: A Love Story,” was the guest speaker. His sister Marie of Janesville was one of the graduates.

Perry told a raft of funny and poignant stories, among them one about his own college degree, which was in nursing.

He spent about 22 months as a nurse, he said, before going to a library and checking out a book about how to be a writer, which he has been ever since.

“The way is not always clear,” he advised the grads.

Perry’s recipe for surviving tough times: “Hunker down and hustle.”

He said he learned all he needed to know about writing by cleaning calf pens on his parents’ farm: “You just keep on shoveling until you have a pile so big, somebody has to notice.”