Alumni

So I graduated.
That's the big monumental event that is dangled in front of your nose like a carrot (or my personal preference, a reese's pieces- who wants to chase after a vegetable??) as the prize for all your labors... beginning basically in grade school.

"Study hard so you can go to college!"
"Pass your AP tests for college credit!"
"Work on your class rank to get into a good college!"
"Write brilliant essays to earn scholarship money for college!"

Everything is prep for college, to help in college, to get through college, to complete college.
And I did it.

I'm DONE!

The graduation ceremony/process was a pretty accurate reflection of the sum of my overall college experience.
It started out with the best of intentions of course, and somewhere along the line things got a little messy, I became uncomfortable, somehow it worked out- sort of, and everything happened anyway and at the end everyone really just wanted to go home.

I was graduating with honors; cum laude with a 3.5000. That's called the 'bare minimum' and yes it still counts. So I got an honors stole, a white flat scarf-thingy with the university seal on the bottom. Nevermind that I had to pay $35 for it on top of the thousands I (or rather my loving parents) shelled out for those classes I got good grades in. That's beside the point. The point is in my rush to leave the house I forgot the stupid stole. So now my graduation ensemble is incomplete and heaven forbid someone mistake me for a poor soul who did NOT achieve the bare minimum of 3.5000 and could be classified as one walking the stage without honors. It simply would not do.

So I call my brother, who is coming with my parents a little after me. My brother is on the droll side, with a voice that epitomizes level-headed-ness which falls in sharp contrast to myself, the one with the voice that leaps up octanes as my panic irrationally increases to a state of mental frenzy.

The graduates are being kept like cattle in some vast (yet way too hot) room in the bowels of the Coliseum. We're standing in "lines" (how can 500 people stand in lines in a room shaped like a rectangle?!) according to our department waiting to walk out to our seats. And I'm clutching my phone waiting and waiting.
Finally my brother calls to say he's here. So holding my cap and doing what I like to think of as a light-brisk jog of urgency (in my heels) go out to meet him on the curb. I grab my stole, say some sort of thank you and 'jog' back into the Coliseum tunnel to don my garb.

At which point I discover my tassel is AWOL.

Ok. Now. *breathe* The tassel is important. I need it.

I bet that it fell off my hat when I 'jogged' out to meet my brother. In the most panicked ten seconds of the day, I RUN out the tunnel to see my tassel laying like a wounded animal on the sidewalk. I yell out "Mine!" to no one and grab it. I've got all my stuff. At last.

With the help of a kind friend in the cattle room, I assemble my graduate look. Big sigh of relief. We walk out into a Coliseum full of cheering people. "Yay you're finally done! We're so proud of you and glad we don't have to make payments on your tuition anymore!"

It takes me forever and an age to find my family sitting to the top right. I wave, they wave and then we all sit down for the next two hours to watch like 499 of my closest stranger friends graduate. It's weird to be a witness to such a pivotal moment in a person's life and yet you don't know them.

Then I walked the stage (YES) and didn't trip/fall/stumble (DOUBLE-YES)

After the ceremony all the graduates are marched out triumphantly and we go through a tunnel that winds up with us outside on of the Coliseum gates shivering and holding our green folders that contain a letter from the Registar stating that we'll get diplomas once it goes through that we've met all requirements. Nice.

There were difficulties locating my family after the ceremony because I neglected to have a cell phone with me and I'm not as good at sending out brain signals as I think. Finally after at least 20-30 cold minutes we find each other at which point everyone is a bit displeased. But all anger is muffled by the blanket of the fact that I AM A GRADUATE NOW YAY and no one gets to be too mad at least until tomorrow.

We went to dinner and that was lovely and then everyone was very tired and we went home. The end.
Now I'm an alumni.
I know that seems like an abrupt end to the little epic story going on here but honestly just telling the whole thing is tiring. But it was fun, and I'm glad it's over. Now that's a sentence that sums up college.