In exactly one month one week and six days I will officially be a graduate of Pepperdine University. (Not that I’m keeping track or anything.)
This is the part where I reflect on what a life-shaping experience my Pepperdine career has been how I’ll be eternally indebted to the institution for making me the person I am today and how grateful I am to have enjoyed the opportunities that I have during the past four years. Yes it’s true; it has been I will be and I am. But if I never endure another probing interrogation as to whether I’m excited or sad to graduate whether or not I plan to keep in touch with my fellow classmates or my personal favorite— what my plans after college are— I’ll be a happy senior.
Meanwhile I’ll relish my last days as an undergraduate and when the time comes to move on I’ll do so. Regardless of my approval and the state of my future those bleachers are going to go up in Alumni Park come the end of April essentially materializing that previously elusive concept of “graduation.”
I know I know— just because something is inevitable doesn’t make it any less worth celebrating (or whining about whichever the case may be). But it’s all about perspective.I think my jarring disdain for the sentimentality of graduation stems from my traditionally peripatetic existence. Shuffling from farm town Illinois to Los Angeles to Washington D.C. to New York City to Florence Italy and back to Los Angeles again my entire life since high school has maintained stasis in a transitory phase. For me May 1 2010 marks just another tick on the timeline.
As I seem to brazenly discount the pride and overall sense of accomplishment that supplements the cap-and-gown ceremony though I want to be clear that I’m not trying to underplay the significance of the event. I’m just so tired of dwelling on this so-proclaimed tragic finale when a brand new opening act waits alluringly on the other side of the graduation stage.
Just think— in two months members of the Seaver class of 2010 will be sprinkled across the globe one by one making our marks on the world and the lives of others with something that remarkably resembles the Pepperdine “P.” After all a diploma asserts our completion of the academic requisites of our programs of study; not an eviction from the institution itself.
And that’s why I’ll march unreservedly toward May 1. It’s not a deadline but an invitation to achieve even greater things than our undergraduate careers have allowed. As for the inquiries gauging my opinion on the matter I’ll continue to smile and assert the general helter-skelter indecision that is my imminent future because ready or not— nah I’m just ready.