It's been an interesting summer here in New England, with the weather pattern that kept most of June cloudy stretching well into July. We have enjoyed the rare bright sunny days, all the more so because they've been so few and far between. There's so much to do in the summer in the North Country that we can never seem to fit everything in, so we've made it a point to take advantage of every day that it hasn't rained, sunny or not.
The flower and vegetable gardens planted in the late spring before the cycle of wet weather began are doing surprisingly well. The more successful gardeners have figured out that they don't need weeks of nothing but sunny days in order to get the garden work done. These gardeners go out and putter whenever there's a convenient break in the clouds. They weed now and then, with the result every bit as beautiful and bountiful as if they'd spent whole days tending to their gardens.
We have students at White Mountains Community College that approach their educational careers in much the same way. These tend to be our nontraditional students, men and women whose primary responsibilities in life include their families and their fulltime jobs. They might only take one or two courses a semester. They get their school work done in between putting the kids to bed and washing the supper dishes, taking advantage of the few spare minutes in their busy lives to complete their coursework, much like this summer's gardeners are taking advantage of the few breaks in the clouds to tend their garden plots.
Some of these students begin taking classes at the college with little idea as to what area they want to major in, but after taking several courses, find a field that excites them. Some skip a semester or two, taking breaks here and there to concentrate on their other responsibilities, but they come back and slowly earn the credits necessary to receive an associate degree or one of our certificates. As a community college, we offer the flexibility to allow students to earn their degrees this way. A student only has to take one course a year to maintain matriculated status.
Much as we hate to rush summer, the start of our fall semester here at the college is fast approaching. Our first day of class is August 31. Our full course schedule is available online here at our website, at our main campus in Berlin at 2020 Riverside Drive, and at our Conway Academic Center at Technology Village, 53 Technology Lane, Conway; the Littleton Learning Center, 646 Union Street, Littleton; and the Haverhill Higher Education Center (Woodsville High School), 9 High Street, Woodsville.
Unless the weather patterns change dramatically over the next few weeks, this summer will go down in the books as one of the coolest, wettest summers on record, but home gardeners will still harvest their vegetables and this winter will appreciate the crops they grew and preserved. And as time goes on, our non-traditional students will enjoy the fruits of their labor, too, as all their work culminates in a college degree or certificate.
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