“We here at Mills share a life,” said Karen Gordon in her audition to be senior speaker for the graduating class of 2013.
Gordon said she wanted to participate in commencement and was glad to be chosen at the annual Junior Senior Celebration to speak at Commencement.
“I feel really good,” Gordon said.
In her speech, Gordon will speak about Mills as a place where students share a life together and how her shared life with her brother played a large part in influencing her decision to attend Mills.
Gordon and her younger brother grew up hand in hand: going to school, singing and learning music together. Gordon came to Mills a little over a year after her brother, David Gordon, suddenly passed away in 2010. It was his life that played a big role inspiring her to go to Mills.
“He did a lot of things in life that people said he would never accomplish and he could never do and he did, sometimes against the current” Gordon said.
After her brother passed, Gordon realized that if she wanted to accomplish earning her degree, she didn’t have time to fool around.
“I had been trying to get back to finish college several times after I quit the first time when I was a teenager,” Gordon said.
It was those last weeks she spent with her brother that put things in perspective for Gordon. Now, almost three years later, she is graduating with her degree in Creative Writing.
Gordon transferred to Mills in the Fall of 2011. She is a certified apprentice midwife, a doula, and a folk music singer and currently works as a bookkeeper doing tax prep work.
“As a jack-of-all-trades type of person, surrendering to a major was an accomplishment,” Gordon said.
After graduating Gordon will continue to work as a bookkeeper to pay the bills, but aspires to write a memoir in the near future and continue to work on projects reporting for radio.
