Kidding (sort of). I'm really looking forward to graduation, but there are a lot of annoying things that come along with it. For example, are my family members going to find parking? Will I be extremely hot if I wear this dress under my robes? Sandals are comfortable, but will they look nice enough? Are we going to make it to the restaurant in time for our reservation? Are the kids in my family going to be totally bored during the ceremony? Stuff like that. There are worse things to worry about, but they come along with the graduation territory.
It seems like a lot of my younger Facebook friends have been graduating from college this year. I know a lot of people who are the age of my best friend's little brothers. A lot of them are so sad to be graduating! I never felt that way. Even though I grew up down the street from the college I eventually graduated from, I was more excited than sad to be leaving college.
I was a transfer student to my school, Lebanon Valley College (LVC), so I think that had something to do with it. I always felt like being a transfer student set me apart from my classmates. My best friends in college were my two roommates, who were also transfer students, one from Millersville, one from West Chester. I spent my sophomore and junior years at LVC, but I was barely around during my senior year. I was student teaching in the fall semester, which meant I was only on campus one day a week for class, and I commuted from home that semester, so I was kind of removed from the social scene. In the spring semester, I had to unenroll from LVC so that I could study abroad at a program that was not affiliated with my school. I wanted to go to Rome, but the only study abroad program my school sponsored was in Perugia. So, I went abroad in the home stretch before graduation. When everyone else was soaking up every last college experience, I was doing something completely different in another country. When I got back home, I was suffering from some reverse culture shock, some serious Rome-sickness, and the sort of sad realization that I had spent four months making amazing new friends who now lived nowhere near me. It was TOTALLY worth it and I would not change anything, but it changed my relationship with LVC. It was the name stamped on my diploma, but I wasn't too upset about leaving it. I think I got an amazing education, and I'm proud to be an alum of LVC. But graduation meant that I was ready for the next step, and at that point in my life, I was so ready to leave and go on to the next phase in my life.
That phase turned out to be Philly! I tell James that I grew up when I moved to Philly. Moving away from home, working with City Year, meeting James…it all changed me and made me who I am today. If I hadn't come here, I definitely would not be graduating from Penn with my Masters degree.
Again, I'm not really sad about graduating. There are certain things I will miss about being in school, like having a wonderful learning community and supportive professors, but just how I knew that great things awaited me after graduation from college, I know that the next phase is waiting for me now. Next year I'll be a classroom teacher, and I'll also be getting married. How can I be sad when I know what's waiting on the other side?
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