The Day After Graduation

By Uloop Writer on June 7, 2013

I have pictured graduation day many times before: listening to the speeches, shaking hands with the Dean of Journalism, walking off the stage in a gown that threatens to slip beneath my footfalls and trip me in front of hundreds. It’s going to be neat.

But what about the day after? I’ve pictured that day exactly zero times before this blog. After the cap is thrown, the pictures are taken, the tears are cried, the alcohol is consumed, more tears are cried, much more alcohol is consumed–what happens then? What happens when I wake up the next morning in a sleeping bag in an empty house I used to call home? What happens when I look in the mirror and see something I’ve never seen before: a college graduate.

Because I’ve asked college graduates from years past, because I’ve read numerous articles on the topic, and because I’m a damn good guesser, I’ll use this time to tell you exactly what happens the day after graduation.

1) You cry.
2) You stifle your tears because your cousin Ralph is in the other room. He came all the way from California for your graduation (and the binge drinking that followed), and you sure don’t want him to hear your breakdown.
3) You slip into the bathroom and turn on the fan, which allows you to wail your precious heart away.
4) You splash water on your face and say this.
5) Suddenly, a calm comes over you. You made it through college. So what if it was easier than knitting. Nobody needs to know that you were only in class for two hours a day, which meant that you plopped down on your couch and watched more than ten hours of old TV shows to remind you of your long-gone childhood. You still made it through college, dammit.
6) You experience a spiritual moment when you hear a voice call your name. It’s a man’s voice, deep and seemingly far away. You wonder if you’ve been wrong all this time. You turn off the fan to hear Him better.
7) Without the fan, you realize it’s just Ralph. He’s begging you to get out of the bathroom so he can poop.
8) Your phone died last night. You plug it in. You have five texts. Four are from your grandma who just learned to text. One is from Bell Real Estate reminding you to be out of your house by noon. It’s 10:00. You have two more hours of being a resident of Eugene.
9) You cry again.
10) Ralph opens the bathroom door. He sees your watery red eyes. He turns around and goes back into the bathroom, shutting the door quietly behind him.
11) You go outside. You notice all the different trees in your neighborhood. It’s taken you a year to appreciate them. You wonder why you’re seeing them now, as if for the first time.
12) As if dying, a flash of memories from the last four years fills your head. It’s a moment of pure recollection. You realize that your mind tends to glorify the past, as if it’s some perfect state that cannot be had again. I’m sure your sophomore year was filled with raucous fun, but was it truly as incredible as you remember? Would you go back and live that year again? You think these thoughts as you sit outside with the trees.

You realize that wherever you go, there will be trees just beyond your front door. (Unless you move to the desert, where there’s cactus instead of trees, which is even better.) You stop crying.

Photo courtesy of Robert Couse-Baker. Although it took me at least fifteen minutes to settle on that damn picture because nobody photographs the day after graduation.

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