Today I got a haircut. The salon’s robe had a large circle of clear plastic in the center so that you could check your phone while in the chair. Aimlessly, I scrolled through instagram while mentally going through a long to-do list for this evening. Do the dishes, pack for my weekend trip, mail my mothers’ day cards. Through the warped plastic, I started paying attention as I realized every single post was the same– blue cap and gown, champagne pop, lion shrine. I put my phone away and finished my hair appointment, and rushed home to eat something.
In the middle of some rice and beans, I got a text of a photo of my name flashing across a virtual graduation ceremony. Oh. I graduated today. That explains the pictures. It was probably the most anti-climactic moment of my college experience. I had a bigger reaction a moment later when I spilled some salsa on my dress.
When I moved home this fall, I knew things would never be the same. I knew I wouldn’t get the grad pics and nights out and goodbye hugs I so dearly wanted. Then, when I moved to Montana in January, I thought that I was over it. I was starting a career, a new life, and I was ready to leave college behind and really become an adult. I wrote my thesis while watching the sun rise over Mt. Helena, and turned it in with little fanfare, but with a feeling of great accomplishment. I thought I was satisfied with the feeling, and that I could close my college chapter for good.
I know every graduation at this point is a weird bittersweet, not-quite-what-you-wanted-but-better-than-nothing type of thing. I just thought that I was beyond the melancholy and grief I felt when I first realized I would never graduate in the BJC with my friends of attend a PLA ceremony like I had expected. But the grief that comes with these weird, situational, unexpected losses is just that: weird, situational, and unexpected. Our whole school and society is still grieving for the things we thought we would once have, no matter how casually we seem to be in the “new normal.” A lot of feelings– happiness, relief, regret, sadness, numbness– can come up after we thought we had put them to bed. I’ve found that a lot of grief is this way, and sometimes something random, like having forgotten your graduation, throws you back into its depth without warning.
After a year (or possibly lifetime) of trying to outrun these lows, I’m deciding to sit in this one tonight. I’m just thinking about my friends, the arguments we had in C9 and the rage-filled blog comments Siena and I would live from the Zombie Lounge the following week. I’m thinking about the absurditiy of free trips to amazing cities, having transformative opportunites, and just having to write a blog at the end of the weekend to recap the experience. I’m remembering how sweaty I was wearing my hand-me-down blazer for the first time to the group interviews, and how Katie Gergel smiled at me and helped me to not stutter through every conversation, and how Zach McKay shook my hand and I thought “if this kind of person is here, I have no chance of getting in.” And now, three years later, sitting in my apartment two timezones away, I’m thinking about what person I might have become if I hadn’t been lucky enough to join this group. Sure, I would have a less nuanced view of leadership and worse critical thinking and possibly a much more negative view of Penn State; but, most of all, I would have missed out on my favorite college experiences with incredible friends, and memories that make this graduation so deeply bittersweet.
The knots in my stomach tonight are really just a tribute to what a beautiful thing I get to say goodbye to. Thank you all for making it so hard to let go.
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