{"id":10579,"date":"2018-05-14T06:00:21","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T16:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/workable-level.flywheelsites.com\/?p=10579"},"modified":"2018-05-14T10:26:04","modified_gmt":"2018-05-14T20:26:04","slug":"kccs-valedictorian-took-the-hard-road-to-graduation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/2018\/05\/14\/kccs-valedictorian-took-the-hard-road-to-graduation\/","title":{"rendered":"KCC’s Valedictorian Took the Hard Road to Graduation"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Mark Ladao<\/a> | Staff Writer<\/h5>\n

It is the end of the school year, so schools around the country are holding graduation ceremonies. It is the season of graduating students fitting themselves into caps and gowns and getting ready to sit in large auditoriums for three hours.<\/p>\n

Some students have decorated caps; others have sashes or accessories that represent their various accomplishments or affiliations as a student. But for the most part, students wear the same thing, and because they are all together, they are indistinguishable, lost in a sea of their school’s color.<\/p>\n

Also lost are the individual stories and struggles that led the students to earning their caps and gowns. This is a fact of all graduation ceremonies, one that only the valedictorian speaker is spared from.<\/p>\n

For Kapi\u02bbolani Community College’s 2018 graduation ceremony, that speaker was Tina Oh.<\/p>\n

She was not the only valedictorian \u2014 around ten other students with a 4.0 grade point averages were distinguished as valedictorians \u2014 but said she had to apply to speak by submitting a letter about her life\u2019s journey up to graduation, a journey the school thought deserved to be shared.<\/p>\n

Oh said she arrived at KCC in 2011 with a ninth-grade\u00a0education. The single mother dropped out of high school, which also means she did not attend a ceremony to celebrate it. This graduation was her first.<\/p>\n

Dropping out of high school led to a road of incarceration, alcoholism, homelessness and depression.<\/p>\n

Oh said she had lived on the streets of Waik\u012bk\u012b and in the downtown area in the 1990s and was, at one point, even suicidal.<\/p>\n

But when given six months by Child Protective Services\u00a0<\/strong>to turn her life around or lose parental rights to her daughter, who is now 11, Oh said it hit her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t change my life,\u201d she said in an interview before the ceremony. \u201cBut then I had a moment of sanity \u2014 because I was so insane out there \u2014 that I cannot let the cycle of my life, my dysfunctional life, go onto the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh said she had gotten this far for her daughter but also for her mother, who also dropped out of high school.<\/p>\n

In fact, Oh said her graduation was dedicated to her entire family, who she felt she had disappointed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a living amends to my family for all the past hurt I\u2019ve caused them for many, many years,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, this is my way of saying thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh\u00a0finished earning her degree \u2014 an Associate in Arts with a concentration in Family Resources \u2014 in the fall\u00a0<\/strong>semester last year and\u00a0attended courses at the University of Hawai\u02bbi at M\u0101noa this semester.<\/p>\n

She is working on a bachelor\u2019s of science Bachelor of Science\u00a0in Human Development and Family Resources with the intention of helping the \u201cmarginalized areas of our community,\u201d mentioning an interest in assisting the homeless and those suffering from addiction.<\/p>\n

Oh said it might take a while to earn a bachelor\u2019s degree, but this time for a reason her family need not worry about.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that I started work full-time, I will have to go [to school] part-time,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it might take me a little longer, but I\u2019ll get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

She works at the non-profit organization The Child Project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mark Ladao | Staff Writer It is the end of the school year, so schools around the country are holding graduation ceremonies. It is the season of graduating students fitting themselves into caps and gowns and getting ready to sit in large auditoriums for three hours. Some students have decorated caps; others have sashes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":10482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campusnews","category-news","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}