Jenna received her Associate’s Degree from JCTC (Jefferson Community & Technical College) in December 2020. Due to COVID her graduation ceremony was postponed until May 2021. Jenna was hesitant to even go to the graduation since she felt it was “after the fact”. By the time the JCTC graduation was to happen Jenna had already completed her first semester at University of Louisville where she is currently attending to earn her Bachelor of Science degree in Communications. With some encouragement from Rick and I we convinced her to show up to be recognized. Boy, did she get recognized! Twice actually!! In typical “Jenna fashion” where nothing really goes according to plan (which was no fault of hers at all). Jenna ended up walking the stage for her graduation TWO TIMES. So yup, the girl that didn’t even want to go to the graduation to begin with ended up being forced to go up on stage twice to graduate because her mother (yes, me) totally missed the first go around. Let me explain how this went down…..
The video above is Jenna’s FIRST walk across stage. So here is what happened. Since it was a COVID graduation the school allowed parents to go up on the stage with the graduate and basically walk with them. This completely threw me off my game and although I was ready with my camera to take a video my phone glitched and I totally missed the President calling her name and earned degree. I was so upset. You can hear me saying (when my phone decided to record) in a pathetically sad voice “I missed it, I don’t know why it’s not working?” So Jenna’s moment was a complete bust (for me…she had no clue at this point I missed it). SO, when we got off the stage I asked the organizers if she could have a “do over” for me. Yes I was THAT MOM! They agreed and Jenna got a SECOND walk across stage. This time I stayed on the ground and recorded from that angle. That is the second video seen below. Thank goodness Jenna is a trooper and just laughed it off. If this would have happened with any of the other three kids I would have been SOL because they would have literally told me to “F” off (kidding, not kidding).
This video was Jenna’s SECOND walk across the stage. The loud clapper in the 2nd video is a worker who saw Jenna come through again and after she said to him “my mom is making me do it again” he told her he would clap extra loud for her (and he did holy cow!) What’s also funny about the 2nd video is the confusion on the President’s face when he calls her name for a second time (knowing he just called it 5 min earlier). Then when she walks to get her diploma and photo (which she was already given) everything was faked (the photographer doesn’t even lift her camera – ha ha). This is just another story for Jenna to tell one day. I mean who gets to walk the stage two times for their graduation? Well I know one girl who did exactly that!
