The Collegian

Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: Focus

Graduating students' walk toward their college diplomas complete their college career. Though every students' steps have the same destination, the footprints Hillsdale students leave behind often vary wildly.

For senior Gennady Stolyarov II, the path towards his diploma has always been laid out. A meticulous planner, Stolyarov entered Hillsdale with 66 advanced placement credits intended for his eventual diploma. Since then, he said, he has carefully plotted the exactly 200 credits which will earn him his triple major of economics, mathematics and German in May.

"I cannot say completing my majors was not challenging," Stolyarov said. "I spent four years generally having a full load every semester."

Despite this, Stolyarov said his labor is already bearing fruit. Between interviewing for several actuary jobs and his upcoming marriage to fellow senior Wendy Bateman in Amarillo, Texas, Stolyarov is not resting upon his laurels after his graduation walk.

"For a long time I have wanted to be an adult, and I feel like right now I am going to get that wish," Stolyarov said. "I need to face the future and work just as hard there as I do now. I can control my own destiny, and that is exciting."

While some students like Stolyarov know in advance what steps they will take at graduation, others find that their feet lead them somewhere unexpected. Senior Nathaniel Wilkinson, for example, said that upon his admission at Hillsdale in fall 2003 he was unsure if he had made the right choice. Taking a semester off in the spring of 2004, he said that upon his return during fall 2005 he wandered from major to major, unsure of himself.

"Picking a specialty is not my specialty," he said with a laugh. "I am so liberally educated I am pretty good at everything, but not terribly good at anything. I am entertaining at cocktail parties, but I cannot pick a career."

As time wore on, Wilkinson said that he buckled down and picked the political economics major he is finishing now. As more of his commitments are completed, he said, the graduation he has awaited so long will seem even more unbelievable.

"I think graduation will be a little weird, a little surreal," Wilkinson said. "I am terribly afraid that they will call somebody alphabetically in front of me and somebody alphabetically behind me, and I will just be standing there waiting. The whole thing seems like the end of an era."

Senior Lindsey Bolser will walk for graduation with an unusual challenge behind her. Diagnosed with white blood cell leukemia during her senior year of high school, Bolser said she enrolled in college knowing full well what an uphill battle it would be while undergoing chemotherapy.

It was. There were times she covered up her barely-there hair as a new punk hairdo. There was her chemotherapy-induced coma during sophomore year, an event which prompted an emergency ambulance ride to DeVos Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich. Last but not least, there was the constant struggle to graduate while managing her disease. Despite this, Bolser said, she would not trade her experience for any other.

"I will miss this place, as it was just what I needed when I needed it," Bolser said. "It was a place where I learned to go from having my life entirely in the hands of other people, such as my doctors, to learning how to be completely self-sufficient and have my life firmly in my own hands. I have come a long way."

As Bolser reexamines her college career, she said she sees how paradoxical her walk will be compared with those of others. At face value, she said, her walk seems like any other student's. Looking deeper, however, Bolser said she understands things that others her age simply have not experienced yet.

"I am different because, while everyone else has been trying to figure out what to do with their lives, I have had to deal with the idea of dying," she said.

But she's also the same.

"Like everyone else, I have had to deal with the same questions of what job I should get, where I should live, what I should do with my life now," she said. "Though I had a different history going into college, I am in the same boat as the others who are graduating."

Should no cancer return by October, Bolser said, she will be considered cured of her leukemia. In the meantime, she has bigger worries - namely, not tripping as she finishes the symbolic walk towards her future and closes the door on her Hillsdale tenure.

"Some interesting stories and memories later, here I am, about to - hopefully - graduate," she said. "It was an adventure, and it was fantastic."

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