My bff Michelle graduated college!! We knew for about a year now that I was going to be taking Michelle’s senior portraits and the anticipation was high. When this virus came around, so many seniors' plans changed. We were extremely excited that when things were looking bad, we were still able to get on campus for pictures, and more importantly, celebrate this amazing achievement!
Michelle graduated from Seton Hall University with a degree in Secondary Special Education and English. Not only that, she graduated with the top GPA of her class of English majors, like what?! She is brilliant. In the fall she’ll begin her first year teaching at Mahwah High School as an English teacher. She is going places for sure!!
This session was so much fun, and not just because she is one of my closest friends! I love the special touches she brought to the session, especially the books she wrote her senior thesis on. Michelle is super laid back and outgoing so taking pictures of her was soooo easy! She giggled through the entire session, not to mention her boyfriend Matt was behind the scenes helping out with that.
We made sure to get all those classic SHU pictures every grad there gets, like stepping on the seal and with the pirate statue! This graduation means so much to Michelle, because not only is she incredibly passionate about education, she is a first generation college graduate. During her first year, she read a statistic that first-generation students are some of the most likely to drop out, and only a fraction of them graduate, even less in four years. She had always been really anxious in school, but she is so so glad that she was able to put that fear and anxiety into hard work.
Michelle is one of the most talented, caring, beautiful people I know. Getting to celebrate this with her was amazing, and I’m honored to be able to capture this moment in time for her. After graduating she is most excited to have her own classroom in the fall when she starts teaching! Mahwah is about to have one of the COOLEST high school teachers around, I cannot wait to see what she does in the future!
