graduation, thoughts

(1)
And so it ends

(2)
As T.S. Eliot famously said:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.


(3)
Which, in a way, is a comforting thought, although who knows how applicable it is in the world as we know it. People nowadays don’t see college as a time of exploration. It has definable start and end points - matriculation and commencement – and everything in between is filler, a way to get to the prize. Or it is other things: an overpriced library subscription, a passport to inebriation, take your pick. The process is no longer as important, as long as you reach the finish line in the end.

(4)
And after all that, the finish line is “commencement”. The end is where we start from (Eliot again).

(5)
The actual ceremony takes place in Wallace Wade stadium in the baking heat. Graduation garb and the summer weather don’t go well together; I am, of course, in black from head to toe – black mortarboard, black gown, black shoes – absorbing all wavelengths of light on the visible spectrum and wishing they would get on with it. They give out each class of degree separately and there are approximately eight million of them. Madeleine Albright speaks. I find the contrast between her and our Convocation speaker, Maya Angelou, vaguely amusing. On arrival, a poet – be idealistic, dream, learn; and when it is time to go, an honored politician – be useful and productive and for heaven’s sake don’t fuck up the rest of your life.

(6)
Betsy and Knuth seem shocked to hear that I’m not going directly on to grad school after the endless discussions we’ve had about it over the past year. They try to hide it, but of course it’s in their expressions, clear as anything. I trot out my well-rehearsed speech about the decision being “the best thing for me at this time”, a speech that I will no doubt have to give ten thousand more times in the next few months.

(7)
Everyone talks about the time when it “hits” them. It wasn’t during the ceremony for me, not was it when I was saying goodbye to my friends. Rather, it happened on Monday morning, just after sun-up, when I walked through Duke Hospital to Main West for the last time in quest of an Internet connection and a bagel. Then it hit me: this is it. No more Duke Hospital, no more West Campus, no more sunning ourselves on the quad. No more late night Dillo runs or early morning cups of French vanilla.

And I think: wow, it really is over.