Graduation is coming up. Graduation is, for many, the end of an era; the end of “adult adolescence” where frat parties and exam anxiety and we become real adults. I never did understand all that.
Before the situation concerning the pandemic, I wasn’t going to walk. Sit through some speech that will try to be quirky and uplifting and then walk across a stage, a stranger in a procession of strangers. Now I am all for the celebration of the achievement of one’s goals, especially when it has taken years to do so.
This year is different. Now, no one will walk, no ceremony, and for many that is a bummer, they want that stage time, for themselves, their family, and that degree. I understand why some people desire that crossing the finish line moment, to bring catharsis for those sleepless nights, those occasional mind-numbing lectures, and that tuition bill.
The only analogous time I can think of is the 2008 financial crash to be a wave of newly minted “real adults” to arrive at the end of the old world.
There will still be those clichés of how it will be the rest of our lives and how bright our futures will be that will resound in the congratulations of friends, family, and faculty. But they know, and we know that the future is cloudy at best; pandemic, economic downward spiral, unable to move to find opportunities for work where there is some to be had and limited (for now) civil unrest.
I am a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist, I do think there will be a spread of opportunities for the taking for those willing to seize them when this is over, but no one knows what overlooks like or when it will have been. I abhor being patronized and dislike double-speak, so no, I do not want to hear about that damn bright future.
We are supposed to go out into ‘the world’ and make good on our prophesized futures, get that good job (and payback that debt). After all, that is what it is about, right? It’s about that money. University is a business. I get it; it is partially their job to make us feel good about our sizable investment of time, differed wages, and debt. But it is not cute to talk as if they are just about our education when they are also about money.
They talk about the future like it is self-evident, but we are in a time of chaos, quiet as it may be, perhaps making it the most difficult to whether. They talk about aide, but many of us are without steady or sufficient income, and they have the gall to ask us of $25 for a graduation fee. $15000 a year for attendance, and they want more money!
Feels like an offshoot of John Mulaney’s comical bit about colleges asking for money, “Hey, Give us some money!” For what? A piece of paper, symbolic weight aside, $25? It cost me 15 cents to go to FedEx to do that.
Graduation is just a play; we all act in as if it is the second verse, the same as the first. But we are doing improv, and they are trying to stick a script that is uncalibrated for the situation we find ourselves in. So when you pay that fine and hear about your future, perhaps you will place less value in platitudes and more in a plan to move forward and secure a future, whatever the weather.
