Day after graduation

As the title indicates, I graduated from Denison yesterday. And summa cum laude at that. It all happened very quickly, and even today I'm not sure that I've processed everything yet. Overall it wasn't really what I expected. I didn't get super emotional. Although it didn't seem like many people did. Shannon was the only person who cried that I saw. I just couldn't really focus in on any one emotion since I was feeling so many of them. I thought that the goodbyes would be rough. And they were sad, but not overwhelmingly so. I know that I'll see almost everyone again. And probably sooner than I think. I also actually didn't get to say goodbye to a lot of people. With the confusion it's understandable though. Seems like that happened to a lot of people.

Commencement itself was long. Cicerone was a great speaker though, and I'm glad that our class got to have him. I found myself spacing out a lot as the B.A.s were walking the stage. There weren't very many B.F.A.s (5, I believe) and most of the people that I know got B.S.s (and there really weren't that many of them either). So after that I would read ahead in the program until I found someone's name that I knew, and that would give me an indication of how much time I had to try to focus my thoughts. It worked only moderately well. I was in such a haze through the whole thing that I didn't even know if they'd pronounced my name right (I was told later that they did). I feel like the day would have been much more enjoyable overall if the stress of cleaning the apartment and moving out by 7 wasn't there. That really is the stupidest thing ever. I know that we should pack during senior week, and I largely DID pack during senior week. But loading can still take quite some time, and packing stuff that is used until the last day. And of course cleaning took by far the longest time. Mike left more than his share of stuff/mess behind, but Josh, Reyan and I all worked together and cleaned the place up fairly quickly. It was still stressful though, because I just kept thinking about whether people had left already and when/how I would track people down. I guess that just reinforces the notion that I will definitely miss the people more than anything else.

I am so thankful that I lived in Morrow freshmen year. Not only were a lot of my current friends fellow Morrow residents, but I really think that it helped my social life freshmen year. Even with the close atmosphere of Morrow I was anti-social until Anne made me hang out in the common room. And I'm so glad that it was a nerdy north-quad dorm, because that was also integral in forging relationships with people living there. Saturday night before graduation Liz and I were toasting buildings with a bottle of wine, and I regret that we never got around to north quad to toast Morrow. When I think of Denison, the innards of that building are still often the first thing that comes to mind.

Going back to commencement, President Knobel's class charge to us was to experience ubuntu whenever we could. At first I thought that that was sort of a weak charge for our class. But I guess it's sort of fitting, and my first act of ubuntu (is ubuntu a verb? I should research the word later) is really the solidification of my intent to remain friends with as many people as possible. I've largely lost touch with people from my High School, and if I get around to talking to people it doesn't happen very often. I feel like it's easy for me to do things like that, but I should really work hard to not make the same mistake twice.

I'm not sure how coherent this post was, but that may reflect my current state of mind. Then again, a few people have mentioned that their thoughts probably weren't coherent and they seemed fine to me. Anyways, I think that's it for me right now. I still have to wrap my mind around the fact that I'll be in Tennessee in less than a week, after I let all of this graduation stuff to sink in.