I know I’m over my post quota today. At least there will only be one more week of the endless “my baby is graduating” posts to ignore. Today, to everyone’s surprise, Tommy was awarded Bearden High School’s Achiever Award. It comes with a scholarship. As if I needed an excuse to cry. Again. The paragraph below was written by Tommy on the scholarship application. His grammar skills are atrocious, but the sentiment is sincere.

I feel I deserve this scholarship because I have overcome a lot of problems and improved greatly. When I was younger, I could not go more than two or three years without having to be removed from society and sent to alternative schools or the like, however, I have improved tremendously and can now handle normal school just fine. I used to be extremely antisocial, avoiding people no matter what, but now I have friends. I ride horses with people on Thursday afternoons and even have a small club I go to Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Saturdays I play dungeons and dragons with some friends as well. I dislike failure a lot and try very hard to get things done and succeed. I work hard and usually get good grades. I also try to help out whenever I can with other students and I try to help my teachers.