Seniors, start your engines.
Graduates of the South Carolina Governor's School for Science & Mathematics will reach the finish line of their high school careers Saturday morning during a historic and unforgettable commencement ceremony at the Darlington Raceway, and Brad Singer of Aiken will be one of the students taking a victory lap.
The graduation ceremony will enable the students to follow all safety precautions and practice social distancing while still allowing graduates to walk across the stage, according to a news release from the school. Graduates will arrive and remain in their vehicles until time to walk across the stage to receive their diploma amid the COVID-19 pandemic. After their walk, graduates will be able to take a “victory lap” around the racetrack in their vehicle.
Singer, a son of Scott and Mary Singer, said he appreciates the school's finding a unique venue to celebrate his and his classmates accomplishments.
“It means the world,” he said. “The Governor's School is such a unique situation. You live together with people for two years, and you get closer in those two years than you probably would with most people during four years of regular high school. Not being able to finish our senior year but being able to have one final opportunity to say goodbye and celebrate all of the hard work we've done, I cannot enumerate a value for it. It means everything.”
Singer said the special ceremony “typifies how much the school cares about the students.”
“They moved heaven and Earth just for us to be able to have a graduation at all, let alone one that is so incredibly unique,” he said.
Singer called his two years at the Governor's School “wonderful.”
“I've been fortunate,” he said. “The school is incredibly challenging academically, so I've had my share of triumphs and heartbreaks. I've made some of the best faculty connections possible. I've truly gotten to know my teachers. I've been able to study under the finest high school teachers in the state.”
Singer said he made lasting connections not only with his peers and teachers but everyone at the school from the lunchroom staff to security guards to the administration.
“It's like a really, really, really small, intimate college,” Singer said. “Family isn't the right word because, in some cases, it's closer than family. It's a shared common experience that ties people together.”
Singer received a Johnson Scholarship from Washington and Lee in Virginia and will attend the university in the fall. He said he is “not quite sure” about a major but is considering business and politics.
The Johnson Scholarship program “selects students on the basis of academic achievement, demonstrated leadership and their potential to contribute to the intellectual and civic life of the W&L campus and of the world at large in years to come,” according to the university's website.
While at the Governor's School, Singer also was named a Hollingsworth Scholar by Furman University and a Carolina Scholar by the University of South Carolina's Honors College. He received an offer, too, from American University in Washington, D.C.
Singer also received the Entrepreneurial Leadership Award.
Located in Hartsville, the South Carolina Governor's School for Science & Mathematics is a high school for academically motivated juniors and seniors pursuing studies in science, technology, engineering and math, according to the school's website. The school is one of only 16 specialized, residential high schools in the nation.
