Kate Cosme, BS, Nursing 2008

Here's my lovely daughter Kate at Elms College's pinning ceremony, where she joined 35 other hardworking nurses who got their bachelor's degrees last Monday.

It was a wonderfully personal ceremony, with the speaker announcing each nurse's background and ambitions for the future. While they said that Kate wanted to be a midwife, she said that she is more likely to try to become a nurse practitioner some day.

Boy it's sure nice to watch a proud group like this receive their pins and think that they all have great jobs that will be even better after they get these degrees. It's hard to have this same level of exhilaration watching three hundred UMass grads trudge off the stage, since there is no way they are going to be as quickly employed and they will carry big debts with them long after the caps and gowns are stowed away.