Julie Peters / Special to The Star Chauntel Nelson, left, and Tina Mangum straighten up as they prepare for their commencement ceremony at Chaparral High School.

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For most of the students at Chaparral High School in Ojai, graduation means turning passions into careers.

How many hours has Bryce Conahey spent playing video games over his 18 years? Enough to be able to do "thumb push-ups," he joked before the 38th annual graduation took place in Ojai on Thursday.

So now that he had high school behind him, it was time to translate all those hours into dollars. Conahey is planning to study Japanese and computer programming at Ventura College this fall so he can get a job in Japan working on developing games for the next generation.

For him, graduation was just "one of those things I do along the way."

Under the hot afternoon Ojai sun, with graduates and their families fanning themselves to keep the heat at bay, many discussed their plans to do what they love for a living.

Brian Yost has been doodling and drawing on his friends for years, so it seemed only natural that the 17-year-old would seek a career as a tattoo artist. Although Yost is still too young to have any ink himself, he has matching plugs in his ears just over a half-inch in diameter.

Lindsay Maharry has been an artist most of her life, too. She plans on using her skills when she heads this fall to the Pratt Institute, an art school in New York City. She wants to become a commercial artist and maybe work on Madison Avenue.

The institute is in Brooklyn, "an up and coming area," said Maharry, who can't wait for the big-city experience.

Travis Henderson is also looking forward to a faster pace much faster. Over the past year, the 18-year-old has been climbing the ranks in the world of speedway motorcycle racing, where riders jockey for position on short-course tracks riding motorcycles that look like bicycles with motors.

Now that high school is behind him, Henderson is hoping to spend more time on the tracks and wants to one day race in Europe, where the sport is bigger and pays thousands of dollars per race.

If these graduates listen to Alyssa Varela's advice, they can do it all.

"Just because something looks intimidating," Varela said in her speech to the class Thursday, "doesn't mean you can't do it."