Sometimes you’ve got to rename the project

Fact of life: When you set out to learn one thing, you’re probably going to learn another.

And you’ll be glad you couldn’t see it coming.

Or to put it another way: You just never know.

Take high school senior projects, for example.

Many schools in the area require students to complete a mentor-directed project. At Columbus High School, students must plan a project and complete it about a month from graduation.

My oldest child, who is now in college, set out to learn portrait photography, and she found willing participants at a local women’s shelter.

On paper, her project was mastering film photography and darkroom development, but she really learned how to show compassion to people in need.

There are much more dramatic examples.

One boy’s senior project was falconry. He was going to train a falcon and on senior boards night he would bring his feathered friend and demonstrate his new skills.

Before that could happen, his falcon flew off and never returned.

That’s when you’ve got to rename your project.

“Mastering the skills of falconry” becomes “Releasing animals into the wild.”

And isn’t that what life is all about? You know, renaming your project.

For the past year, my oldest son, Robert, has been working on his senior project, in which he took a wrecked 1999 Jeep Cherokee that he’d bought for $1 and rebuilt it into a reliable vehicle.

At least, that was the plan. Bess was so confident in it that she went ahead and promised our daughter she could take our family’s third vehicle back to college after winter break.

Which meant the only form of transportation to high school for Robert and his brother was — drum roll, please — his senior project.

Let me first say that Robert did a great job. Under the guidance of Dale, his mentor and a certified mechanic who owns a gigantic tool box on wheels, he rebuilt the engine, replaced the brakes and exhaust system, and did a whole lot of other things.

On many days, the Jeep did transport Robert and his brother to school.

But we’ve since renamed the project from “Returning a wrecked vehicle to working order” to “Learning to be stranded on the side of the road.”

Clearly, this is a valuable skill to have. In the past few months, thanks to his senior project, Robert has learned how to move a stalled vehicle off the road and perform emergency roadside maintenance.

He’s also learned that the best way to fix something is just to wait for it to break. And that you can find just about any auto part on the internet.

It’s also a great way to meet people. Last week, Robert was driving the Jeep to Carver High School to meet his baseball team to watch the Tigers’ game against Shaw and the ceremony honoring David Pollard, the head coach who was killed in a senseless crash involving a stolen car.

On the way to the school, the Jeep broke down. A Carver student stopped to help. It was T.J. London, the Tigers’ 400-pound nose guard, whom Robert has spent several hours of his life on a football field attempting to block.

The last couple of weeks have been like that. As high school baseball’s regular season ended, we thought it was going to be about winning and losing and making the playoffs. We thought we’d just stay on our side of town and watch our own teams.

Instead, we learned about somebody who had been quietly making a difference, we mourned his loss, and we came together as a community.

We had to rename the project. It wasn’t fun and it wasn’t easy.

But we needed to do it, and we did.

This story was originally published April 29, 2016 at 9:47 AM with the headline "Sometimes you’ve got to rename the project."