graduation

i am officially a college graduate.
(woo!)

what this has meant about the last few days:

friday, my parents came into town, because my school had its "recognition ceremony" for graduates from our programs that evening. it was kind of a nice ceremony, because every graduate had the chance to walk. and when they say "walk," it sounds idiomatic, but they mean it: you walk, and you don't stop walking. you pause for a moment and shake someone's hand, someone else's hand, pick up a facsimile of a diploma, but you keep moving and then somehow you are back in your seat. the highlight for me was just after i stepped off the stage: my thesis advisor stood up in the front row of faculty and gave me this huge smile. he shook my hand, gave me a hug, and said to me, "congratulations. you've done good work. now go get a job."

the keynote speaker at that ceremony was a brigadier general who has served as assistant surgeon general, but who has no medical background or training--he's an artilleryman by trade. weird enough, right? the only part of his speech i particularly liked was, "be prepared for the human dimension of your business." but i can now say (with his permission) that i have seen a brigadier general cry. he got all choked up telling a story about a soldier in recovery from a rather serious set of injuries who was from pittsburgh, which he remembered because there was pittsburgh stuff hanging all over the walls. he asked this young man, "what do you want to do next? maybe go to the university of pittsburgh?" and the soldier, who was not yet able to speak, shook his head and pointed to his uniform hanging on the wall: all he wanted to do was go back to the army. ...i have a few issues with the military, which could probably make up their own entry, and which more than probably contributed to my distaste for this particular speaker, especially his emphasis on the importance of family to the healing process (for anyone, but his experience is limited to soldiers). this bothered me because, while it is absolutely true, this man was trying to speak to me from a setting in which i may very well find myself disallowed to be family to those who are important to me.

saturday was a slow day. i woke up late and spent the afternoon doing nothing with my parents, before going to dinner and then downtown to see Godspell. this is my favorite musical, and my mother's as well, so i was excited when i found out it would be playing the weekend they were visiting. i'd never seen a professional production before, just the movie (1973) and a church production a few summers ago. this was...different. it's the sort of musical that is inevitably "updated" with each production. there were a ton of pop culture references worked into the parables, some of which i liked and some of which i didn't. even some of the music was...reinterpreted--some of which i liked, and some of which i didn't. but overall, it couldn't have been anything but a good experience: Godspell is my religion, and seeing it performed is like going to church. more on that another time, perhaps.

sunday was the big graduation for the whole university. i was dreading it, because i expected it to take about 5 hours and be incredibly boring. it was one last "ok, i don't care, let's get this over with" obligation before departing from undergrad.
...and the gravity of it hit me as i first saw out into the arena, waiting in the processional just on the other side of the door from the winding hidden hallways where they'd staged us. This Was Big.

the arena where we have to hold our graduation boasts that it seats 12,500 people. and while it wasn't packed, it was full, of people and positive energy.

the event itself was nothing special, i thought. i was pleasantly surprised when we escaped in less than three hours. nobody even pretended to be dignified: people were texting and talking all over the room. the chancellor probably gives the same speech every year. the commencement address and the student response were traditional at best, trite at worst, and altogether uninspiring.

highlights there: the smile on my mother's face when my name was one of 39 called out of thousands of undergraduates in recognition of what actually had been hard work. exchanging grins with the man who read my name as he stood at the podium. the relieved, ecstatic enthusiasm of the pharmacy and nursing students. the chancellor's assertion to graduates from the school of health sciences that "yours is the science of second chances, of human restoration." confetti making its graceful, glittering descent from the ceiling and the seeming sky in that final rush of confined adrenaline.

that evening, dinner with my family, including the family of one of my closest friends. sitting on another's lawn with more-and-less nostalgic tales and a digeridoo--"wait, guys, i just realized: these are the stories we're going to have from college." beer and the kinds of conversations you can only have Right Now.