Graduation Recap

I am a college graduate.

Of course, Marist had to find a way to fuck with me in the last possible moment.

Marist was one of the very few colleges this year who used a pre-recorded system to announce graduate's names. At rehearsal, we were given line up cards with numbers on them. The numbers corresponded to our pre-recorded names. When we got up on the stage, we handed our card to a technician, they punch in our number, and our name is announced over the loud speakers. This system is a good one, as it speeds things up and also allows students with difficult names to pronounce a chance to have it pre-recorded correctly.

However, as always with technology, it wasn't fool-proof. But out of about 900 names, only 10 or so were messed up. I was one of them. Of course.

I handed the technician my line up card, and he must have punched in the wrong number. I'm standing on stage and "RYAN J. WHITE" is announced over the loud speakers. Clearly, I am not Ryan J. White. The president of the college handed me my diploma and told me not to worry. Then, finally, the technician gets it right and my name is announced. However, not without a nice echo/reverb.

This is how my name was annouced:

"AMANDA (AMANDA) MY LAST NAME (MY LAST NAME)"

The minute I get off the stage, I get a million text messages from my friends, all saying something along the lines of "this WOULD happen to you."

Great.

The day after graduation, we drove into Brooklyn to drop the remainder of my stuff off. Unfortunately there was a marathon in Chelsea that blocked off the Battery Tunnel. We drove around for 2 hours (probably the duration of the race) until we could get into the tunnel and get to Brooklyn. I don't care what cause that race was for, but I hope everyone dies from it. THAT'S HOW PISSED I AM.

We left Brooklyn at around 4pm and drove straight home to Buffalo, getting home at midnight.

Throughout all of senior week, I have to admit that it didn't really hit me that college was over. I guess I wasn't sober enough to think about it in depth. What scares me is how I'm caught by emotions sometimes. For instance, I'm not someone that you'd see crying at graduation. Rather, I'm someone who you'd see the next day, at a McDonald's in Brooklyn, crying by the ketchup dispensers. GET IT TOGETHER. That's what I try to tell myself anyway. Of course, once I was alone in my car, sans the annoyances of my family, I cried like a fucking baby for the majority of the drive. And even with that release, it still doesn't seem real to me. I don't know if it ever will.

I'll probably just wake up one day in a few months and realize, oh my god, this is the rest of my life.