By Mikael L. Kenoyer

”Come on, hurry up!”

Jenna Alphenaar is working at Marios Kitchen for the summer, but she’s got her mind on the future. In September, she will leave for the sunnier climes of Australia, and plans to prolong the sunshine when she returns from a year of travels by realizing her life-long dream of living in California, where she hopes to attend Santa Monica Community College.

While Jenna enjoyed her years in Blaine schools, she wished there had been more opportunity to learn what most appealed to her; international studies and travel.

Dustin Massey has taken advantage of the opportunities Running Start has provided him, and now finds himself two years ahead. He graduated with a diploma from Blaine high school and an AA from Whatcom Community College. He plans to move to Bellingham, where college has become the center of his life, to attend Western Washington University and do what comes naturally to him, computer science. With the two years of time and money Running Start has saved, Massey intends to go after his masters degree. He hasn’t lost touch with BHS entirely. “You’re always tethered,” he said. While he may not have spent his final two years of high school with friends and classmates from Blaine and Point Roberts, he has made the most of what was offered to him.

Shalean Hager may have graduated, but she isn’t planning on leaving school anytime soon. She’s spending the summer in Richmond, studying ballet and jazz and preparing to test for her teaching certificate.

A dancer from the age of three, Hager has always wanted to instruct. She graduated in a non-traditional fashion, as a contract-learner, and while she feels she may have missed out on some of high school, she says she still feels tied to Blaine, and thinks that contract-learning worked well for her. After she gets her teaching certificate, Hager plans to attend Bellingham Technical College.

Veronica Hassler, relieved to be graduated after a stressful finish at Blaine high school, isn’t rushing into anything. She’s considering the thousands of options open to her, searching for a job, and looking into B.C. technical colleges.

Kyle Teutsch will be attending Cornell University in the fall to study electrical engineering, but will devote this summer to showing off the video production techniques he learned at Blaine high school. His video about Blaine’s borders economy won first place at the state technical competition in Bellingham. He plans to enter a new work on the impact of the border on Point Roberts in the national competition in Denver. Teutsch said he hopes to eventually specialize in robotics or laser optics. “That’s where the future is,” he said.

Unfortunately, attempts to reach Noah Myers, graduate of Blaine high school, and Kim Dalzell, graduate of South Delta Senior Secondary, were unsuccessful. .

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