By Larry Olmstead

It is the season of ceremonies – graduations, weddings, recitals, final commemorations of any activity that must cease before summer. I have attended several this past month. I was particularly thrilled to see my son graduate from middle school last week. But the most inpsirational event I have attended recently was my brother’s college graduation.

Tony received his bachelor’s degree in informational technology after close to three decades in the workforce. If you want to be inspired by the power of a dream, attend any commencement ceremony at his school, the University of Phoenix.

The University of Phoenix, of course, has become the nation’s most prolific granter of degrees based on smart use of e-learning and relentless marketing to professionals seeking to augment their college credentials. I can’t tell you much first-hand about its classes or course offerings. But I can tell you about its students.

You won’t find too many who are there because, “well, you go to college after high school, right?” Or because they are indecisive about their future and college seems as good an idea as any. Or because their parents are paying for it, so what the heck?

No, if you’re at University of Phoenix, you are there because you have a dream. You are trying to pull yourself up, to get that one credential that is the ticket to a better-paying job, to show your kids that education is indeed the path to a better way.

And you are not spending your spare time at the campus pub or playing intramural volleyball or ping-pong in the rec room. You have no spare time. While taking classes, you are working full-time, or caring for your kids or aging parents or both.

It’s a long slog, because students generally take only a class or two at a class at a time. My brother, who earned some college credits when he was younger, spent about four years finishing his degree at University of Phoenix, meanwhile working in a demanding customer service role for a prominent telecommunications company. Tony would do a shift at work, get home around 7, have a bite to eat with his family, take a nap, wake up at 10 or 10:30 and do his schoolwork into the early hours, maybe 2 or 3 am. Then it would be up at 7 to get ready for work. Weekends? More schoolwork at home, or with study-group partners.

I know something of their journey, having not yet achieved my own degree. Last year, I re-enrolled at George Washington University and took a summer course online. I aced the course, but the long nights of reading, writing and research nearly killed me.

I am very proud of Tony. In attending his commencement, I realized how many others were out there, just like him. Single moms, couples and people with disabilities went to the stage to receive their diplomas. I had tears in my eyes throughout the joyous ceremony, thinking of what each of these adult learners had taught all of us about the triumph of ambition and the sacrifices necessary to achieve something meaningful.