Jaden Peterson said he is actually excited about graduation on Thursday and is not bothered by the fact it will be virtual and not an in-person ceremony.
Well, except for one thing.
“The only thing I’ll miss is not throwing the hat (in the air),” he said in a phone interview. “Now, I will remember it as the class who did not have to go to graduation to get a diploma. All in all, I’m pretty excited.”
He has always been computer savvy and plans to go to Miami University next year and major in game design in the Armstrong Interactive Media Studies program.
The son of Mark and Dawna Peterson, he had what could be called a normal freshman year at Talawanda where his family lived in a house and he attended school, but his father was invited to speak at colleges around India and they sold the house.
“My parents’ idea was to travel the world for a year and they homeschooled me. It was pretty ambitious, even for my parents,” he said. “We put everything in storage and packed three large suitcases and three backpacks and took off for India.”
They got to travel around that country and Peterson saw the extremes of life there, calling it a “massive experience” with the population hubs home to millions of people, shops set up in rows on the streets and then other areas with almost nothing, where it was very clean and they could walk around and not see anybody.
While there, he took college courses where, he said, “They taught me to write. I like math. They gave me an algebra book and said, ‘Read this.’ The book had tests in it and I learned math. India was a great place. They have a great train system.”
Before returning to Oxford, they made stops in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, all of which he said made travel easy with great train systems.
He also spent time in Japan where he lived with a host who provided transportation, and he was able to explore the country, which he describes as, “extremely clean.” The host spoke no English, however, but he learned some Japanese from the man who would point to something and give him the Japanese word for it.
He also learned of Japanese hospitality as he was trying to leave the country and found flights delayed twice by hurricanes. They arrived at the airport with the host driving but learned of the flight cancellation and returned to his home. He was early for the second flight and the man had gone home. Assuming the airport would stay open, he decided to just wait for the flight, but learned the airport was closing at 10 p.m. He moved outside to wait there but several employees found him and said it was not safe and gave him vouchers for a night in a nearby hotel and breakfast.
Back home in the U.S. for a month, his father was scheduled to teach in Miami’s student center in Luxembourg for the next year and they again left.
“Everything was still in three big suitcases,” he said. They went to Differdange to live in a castle for the academic year and he had to attend school there where the day began at 6 a.m. and he had an hour-and-a-half train ride to get to school. His credits transferred to Talawanda, keeping him on pace to graduate this week.
“Jaden is used to independent learning and classes online. He functions well,” his mother, Dawna, said.
On the way home, they stopped in England for his sister’s graduation from the Imperial College and Royal College of Arts in London, where graduates presented their projects. His sister’s project was on sustainability and recycling and he said he was especially interested in one which proposed creating 3-dimensional photos enabling the blind to “see” faces by touching them.
Peterson said returning to Talawanda High School was “kind of awkward” after being away for two years and he had not stayed in touch with some of his friends from the past.
One friend he had stayed in touch with was not in any of his classes but they did meet for lunch periods.
He was part of the school’s Mock Trial team in the role of a witness as the team got to the regional competition, but did not make it to state.
“I had to meet new people. Life was pretty normal again. We lived in an apartment near the school,” he said. “I was in a film club that made films shown in announcements. We thought we were pretty good.”
Peterson said his travel experiences and online learning served him well when school was shut down in March and became totally online learning. He predicts a heightened use of the internet for all business due to the country’s experience with the pandemic shutdown.
“I’m excited to see if it changes the business landscape,” he said.
In thinking back over the family’s overseas travels, he suddenly recalled yet another stop they had made over a break when they went to Spain, with side trips to the Netherlands and France and another trip to Italy, where he came away impressed.
“Venice is the place that is what traveling is all about. It’s all water and you use boats all the time. The shops are all close to one another and there is a gelato place every 10 steps,” he said. “If you want to go to Europe, the place you have to go to is Venice. It’s like nowhere else.”
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