Gilroy
– Seven years ago, 19-year-old Bockarie Karvon’s college
professor regularly dismissed him early from class because rebel
soldiers were shooting through his classroom windows from the
nearby bushes.
Gilroy – Seven years ago, 19-year-old Bockarie Karvon’s college professor regularly dismissed him early from class because rebel soldiers were shooting through his classroom windows from the nearby bushes.
A burgeoning civil war in Freetown, Sierra Leone, threatened the sophomore’s dream of becoming an electrical engineer and forced him to flee the country. Now a 27-year-old Gilroyan, Karvon took a step closer to achieving his dream Friday.
Karvon was among 397 Gavilan College graduates to receive a diploma at the community college’s 87th annual commencement. More than a thousand cheering family members and friends attended the ceremony.
For 48-year-old Maggie Huckabay of Hollister, graduation represented a shift in careers. She and about 20 other students receiving their associate of science and certificate of completion in registered nursing were easily identified by their purple and yellow leis, excited chatter and caps decorated with patches of nurse’s uniforms, cough syrup bottles, syringes and two large letters: RN.
If Huckabay passes the state board exam this summer, she will move from being a hospice worker to serving in a hospital.
“Now I can care for a lot more people,” she said.
For Karvon, graduation commemorated six years of struggles that included learning English, working odd shifts stocking shelves at Costco and adjusting to American life.
“When I first come here, I didn’t even know what the heck is going on,” he said.
With basic English skills, even daily responsibilities, such as shopping for groceries, became difficult, let alone achieving his goal of being an electrical engineer. An additional obstacle was that his two years of college in Sierra Leone were not honored in the United States.
“When you come here, you have to start fresh,” Karvon said.
It took him one year of high school and two years of English classes at Gavilan before he possessed the credentials and skills necessary to begin science classes. It took another three years to finish the credits for an associate of arts degree.
While commencement was a celebration, it was also the beginning of another long journey for Karvon. After earning his electrical engineering degree from San Jose State University, he wants to give back to his parents, still in Sierra Leone, and his country.
“Over there, they is a lack of school, medical care, food,” he said. “If I have chance, I will go there to help them out.”
Karvon’s journey through education exemplifies the comparison Gavilan President Steve Kinsella made during his speech between life and a marathon.
“A marathon is not a race against anyone, even though you may be surrounded by thousands of people,” he said to a packed gym. “You can slow down and enjoy the scenery. Your individual performance is the only thing that counts.”
Regardless of the future, Gavilan graduates have already given exceptional performances, Assemblywoman Anna Caballero said during her keynote speech.
“If we took the time, we would hear stories of determination, persistence and true grit,” she said.
The words did not go unappreciated, said 24-year-old Gilroyan Melinda Soares, who led graduates with a 3.97 grade point average despite giving birth 17 months ago. A graduate of Gilroy High School’s 2000 class, she will enter her junior year majoring in physics and philosophy at University of California, Santa Cruz, next year.
However, the night was not only a celebration of student achievement, Soares said.
“I’m so grateful for the faculty members here,” she said. “They believed in me and supported me all the way. Now it’s two years at UCSC and then it’s on for grad school.”
