LINCOLN – Twins Ryan and Gavin Pickering learned some tough career lessons during their senior year of high school.

Ryan Pickering rattled them off at a dinner for Mattanawcook Academy seniors and their families held on Saturday, the night before graduation, in a hangar at the Lincoln Regional Airport.

“Don’t take a job for granted, and don’t limit your skills,” Ryan Pickering said Saturday. “I think everybody took job security for granted, and a lot of workers have no other skills.”

The twins’ father, Michael Pickering, was one of more than 500 workers suddenly unemployed when the bankrupt Lincoln Pulp and Paper Co. shut down in January. He is one of 125 workers who are back at work. Another 230 or so are scheduled to be back on the job by August.

“I think the kids felt a lot of quiet stress about it,” teacher Christine DuBois said Saturday. “It wasn’t always an overt topic of conversation, but it was on people’s minds. I don’t think it put a damper on the kids though.”

Ryan Pickering said the shutdown had directly affected about half of his 83 fellow graduating seniors.

“It’s been hard planning for college and everyday living,” he said Saturday. “I think we’ve all been affected by it.”

The problems at the mill, however, did not completely overshadow the twins’ senior year.

“We’ve had a lot of fun,” Gavin Pickering said, emphasizing a recent trip to Knoxville, Tenn., to compete in the national finals for Destination Imagination.

The Pickering twins will attend Upward Bound, a college preparation program for first-generation college students, at the University of Maine this summer. They will attend the University of Maine at Farmington in the fall.

Senior Matt Swett said Saturday that, unlike previous generations, he and his classmates do not see a future for themselves in Lincoln. No member of the Class of 2004 plans to work in the mill, he said.

“The mill is on its last leg,” said Swett. “The town needs to find a more economically stable business to step in.”

The students who attended the dinner, organized by the local business Catering with Class, said they came to spend time with friends, hear the band Second to Last play and to make one more senior-year memory.