2 Southern University graduates with a 5-decade age gap reflect on their journey

southbayblackjournal 2 hours ago

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BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – At Southern University, no age is too old or too young to walk across the stage.

For 68-year-old Donald Burnette, this is a moment he has dreamed of since 1974.

Donald Burnette(WAFB)

“Education is an expectation of our family, and I had to withdraw in 1977. The Lord blessed me in 2021 to return to the university to complete a journey that had been a thorn in my side because I didn’t complete it in the proper time, and now I am elated that I had the opportunity to finish my degree,” Burnette said.

Burnette was a member of the Human Jukebox in the 70s. In the spring of his junior year, financial hardships forced him to quit school and return home to help his family.

“I worked for 40 years. I retired, I retired mainly due to I had a heart attack in 2019 and the Lord blessed me to survive the heart attack, and once I was rehabilitated from the heart attack was when I re-entered the university,” Burnette said.

Receiving his diploma today, he had one word to describe the feeling.

“Blessed,” Burnette said. “When I had my heart attack, I was on the gurney not realizing I had 100% blockage. When the cardiologist told me I had 100% blockage they had to admit me to ICU and also, I had an aorta aneurysm, and the Lord spared me from that. There’s no better blessing than that. “Right then I said he’s got bigger goals for me to finish.”

From one of the oldest graduates to the youngest in Southern University’s history: Elijah Precciely. The child prodigy entered college at just 11 years old and graduated today at 17.

“I never thought it would be my goals or any of the things I’ve achieved to be quite spectacular. People had to let me know like hey man, this is pretty cool. I just followed whatever I felt called to. You know whatever opportunities were presented before me. I tried to take advantage of it and use it for the good of others,” Precciely said.

Precciely says his journey hasn’t been without its fair share of struggles. But now that he’s at the end of this chapter, all he feels is peace.

“When you’re fighting and working to get something accomplished, when you’re really giving it your all, you’re struggling to go through something, but you’re actually overcoming and succeeding at every turn, even success gets tiring,” Precciely said.

“Even after every battle that you face, you need to rest, right, but at the end of it, you finally have peace to see your work complete. Every time that you had to fight for a class, every time you had to go through some administrative problem, every time you had to work with people on a project they didn’t wanna work with you, work through all of those things to finally see the compilation of all your hard work that just brings utter and total magnificent, beautiful peace,” Precciely said.

Both graduates say this is just the first step in their journey and their goals extend way beyond Southern’s classroom walls.

Burnette graduated with a degree in criminal justice and Precciely graduated with a physics and mathematics degree, and both say they plan on going to graduate school next.

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