Well, I’m officially a Purdue graduate. I think the hardest part of getting my degree was surviving graduation day in my shoes. I think I walked a couple miles today and stood forever. My feet are dead. The weirdest thing about graduation was realizing how many people I knew. I knew at least 1/4 the people there or at least their faces. One guy from my COM class that I ran into earlier in the day went over and shook Jischke’s hand after he got his diploma. That was funny as hell. The kid had guts.

My neighbors for graduation weren’t bad. The guy on my right was a complete redneck, though, and giggled or made a comment about EVERY single foreign name and started freaking out when Jischke spoke of Don Quixote, asking “what does this have to do with us???” I was trying to be pleasant, but I was close to saying “You uneducated fool, if you don’t shut your mouth, I’m going to stab you with my complimentary pseudo-pencil.” The guy to my left was cool. As the doctorate degrees were being awarded, he said, “Look…$50,000 on that side and $80,000 by the time they’re to the other end.” haha, so I added, “Well, for my major it’s $40,000 and then $25,000. I think this degree devalues me.” hehe he enjoyed that.

Graduation was pretty cool, though. I’m glad I attended. I thought President Jischke’s speech was really good. I had to translate parts of Don Quixote in high school. I found it all really interesting, especially how this world is built by people pursuing their “impossible” dreams. That really hit home and I must admit, it inspired me to stick to my wits, even if my dreams truly are impossible. The glee club, symphony orchestra, and brass band were amazing. I wanted to be playing with them so badly. I had flashbacks to high school band and how I’d get goose bumps all over when we played really well together. I shook hands with a few classmates, but there were no tears shed about missing them. Funny, you’d think in 4 years, I might have acquired one close friend. I introduced my parents to Sue, one of my professors from freshman year. She was still nagging me about wanting me to help her with this job over the summer. She said I was her first pick.

I ate with the family at La Scala. It was wonderful! Even my dad commented about it being a pretty cool place. I even got tiramisu for dessert. It was SO rich, though, so I had to share. I got lots of gifts from my family. They were entirely too generous. I suppose they think this is a lot more important than I do. My mom wrote me out over 100 recipe cards and made me 3 full scrapbooks covering my life from birth. I just couldn’t bring myself to look through them. I’d told her that I never wanted her to make me scrapbooks, because I knew I wouldn’t be appreciative enough. It was just awkward enough trying to play cool all day with my family. You could have cut the tension with a knife, so reminiscing about old days just wasn’t going to happen. It might have been cool to look through them with a non-family member, so I could tell stories about different parts of it. eh, I’m beat and I think I need to sleep.

It’s too bad things turned out the way they did. It could have been a much better day and evening, but I guess a nap and movie will suffice for celebrating attaining a B.S. with distinction.