A week after graduating from Cape Elizabeth High School, Megan Barnes will be on a plane to Ecuador, another self-created opportunity in her dare-to-be-different life.
She won’t be around town for the summer and she doesn’t expect to attend college in fall, regardless of the fact she has been offered a full scholarship and her own laptop computer at Huntington College in Alabama.
“Everyone here thinks I’m nuts,” Barnes said.
When Barnes decided she wanted to study abroad her entire junior year, she did, regardless of the fact that the school administration wasn’t as cooperative as she would have liked. She took the responsibility and spent two summers taking classes to make sure she would have enough credits to graduate on time.
“It was the best thing I’ve ever done.” For five months she studied Spanish in Barcelona, then four months as a student at the English First School in Quito, Ecuador, the school that has now offered her a job as activities director for international students.
“A lot of people have problems with what I did last year,” she said. Before graduation on Sunday Barnes said she was still afraid that someone would tell her she couldn’t graduate for one reason or another. She said she was known for not being in school and for being impulsive about leaving to travel.
Barnes was actually in Ecuador at the English First School only a few weeks ago for her Senior Transition Project, again against the recommendations of the administration. This time she brought a friend and fellow senior along with her to share the place that means so much to her.
Most of Barnes’s stuff was left in Quito because she knew she would be returning after graduation. She also left everything there for another reason – as an excuse if her parents tried to talk her out of going. “That way, they have to let me go back,” she said.
Barnes said her parents have always been supportive of her. “I think they just want me to be happy,” she said.
The guidance counselors at Cape Elizabeth High School push everyone to go to college, which Barnes said she understands.
“That’s (their) job, (they have) to say those things.” But, Barnes doesn’t like what she calls “the cookie cutter” approach to guiding students through the school system and on to college without any discussion of other possibilities or opportunities.
“It’s so generic,” she said. “It’s the all-American dream, apparently.”
Barnes said only two teachers were supportive of her decision to forego college at the moment for more real-life experience. The rest told her if she didn’t go to school now she would never want to go back. But, Barnes said she is not worried about that.
“There’s a lot more I want to do,” she said. “I want to get an education of course … just not right now.”
Barnes said teachers should be teaching students to think outside the box and to do something different.
The majority of the students who graduated from Cape High School on Sunday will go on to freshman year at a college or university. The guidance office at the high school said typically more than 90 percent of graduating seniors from Cape high school go on to post-secondary education.
“Everyone is just in a different mentality,” Barnes said. “I’m ready academically and mentally. But, I’m just not ready to sit down with books.” Barnes said she’s also not ready for what she knows is the freshman scene at most colleges and universities.
“Hook me up to a keg with an IV … that’s what freshman year is like,” Barnes said. “I’m kind of over that.”
In a few weeks Barnes will be trekking with friends in the jungle.
Her job is perfect for her, she said: “I’m getting paid to travel.” She gets to take students from all over the world to artisans’ bazaars, surfing, to the Equator line and to waterfalls in the jungle. And most importantly, she gets to speak Spanish, which she said she loves to do. In July she plans to travel to Colombia.
Barnes’s roots will always be in Cape Elizabeth, she said. But, “I have a serious case of wanderlust and I hope it never leaves.”
“You have to spread your wings and find a balance between them.”
She said someday when she has money she will create a scholarship at Cape Elizabeth High School called the “dare to be different” scholarship, which will be given to a graduating senior who is not afraid to think outside the box and pursue their interests regardless of societal pressures.
Megan Barnes still in her graduation gown already has her thumb out and is ready to travel.
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