Musings...

Today, I graduated from college. I’ve been sitting in front of a blank document for the past half hour thinking about what I want to say about this occasion in my life. On one hand, it’s exciting, in a way, to finally have achieved the payoff of all my hard work: magna cum laude, university honors, two degrees…blah.blah.blah. On the other hand, what do all those titles really mean? That I’m more educated, sure. More employable? Maybe. Smarter? Not necessarily.

A lot of people have asked my why I didn’t attend any of the graduation ceremonies, and I haven’t really had a good answer. I think it has something to do with the fact that the culmination of my education isn’t going to be found sitting in an arena with nine hundred other assholes waiting to hear my name. It’s not about those two pieces of paper. I don’t need a “moment” of recognition; if I haven’t been recognized during the past four years, then I don’t deserve to be recognized at graduation either. Plus I really don’t want anybody else’s recognition. I know what I’ve done. I’ve worked really fucking hard in college, at times to the detriment of my fun level and my social life – that’s it.

The funny part is that despite all of this (or possibly because of it), I’m still unemployed at the end of July. But that isn’t what matters. What matters it that right now, I’m doing what I love, I have friends I love, and at least for the next two months, I get to live rent free on the east coast. After that is the real test of my education, the real graduation: if I can still make something cohesive out of my life, then maybe it was all worth while.