I Did It!

Today was my graduation day! [I had a friend in high school who spent the entire week prior to the big day referring to it as "gradu-madu-ficuation" and now every single time I think of the word "graduation" I think of his dumb word. It kind of drives me crazy, but I cannot get my brain to stop making that association no matter what I do.]

I'm glad I decided to walk and attend the ceremony even though my family couldn't be here to see me do it. I'm glad I did it for myself and to be with my other friends who were graduating. Being at the ceremony helped me to acknowledge that it IS a big deal to get your masters degree. This whole graduation has been feeling sort of like just one more step to me, one of the many things I have to do on the path to the Ph.D. As a result of the fact that half of my mind is already on the east coast and I'm already feeling so focused on the work I'm going to have to do in the future, I keep sort of forgetting that becoming an MA is a big deal in and of itself. Not a whole lof of people in the world get a masters degree, and of course I'm scared that I never will get the Ph.D., and if that's the case this degree will become even more important to me than it already is. So I needed the chance to slow down for a second and go, "Wow, I did two years of work to earn this", and today helped me to do that.

I'm also glad that I went to the ceremony because they recognized several of my achievements. I think when I graduated at TCU they just had everyone that was graduating with honors stand up and be recognized, but I don't think you weren't recognized individually other than having some sort of mark by your name in the program. Well, they do it differently here and they announce "summa cum laude, magna cum laude", etc. after the name of every undergrad earning honors. They also announce the recipients of the most prestigious school-wide scholarships. So when I picked up my name/number card this morning, my name had this LIST after it. The guy next to me in line was like, "Wow, are you going to read something?" and I laughed and said, "I'm not, but I guess somebody is!" And sure enough, when it was my turn to get my hood and walk across the stage to get my diploma, they said my name and then followed it up with, "Ms. D is an X Classic Scholar, an X Foundation Scholar, and the recipient of the 2007 award for Outstanding Graduate Student in the Department of Fine Arts." It was quite the little spiel. The dean hooded me, I got my diploma from the president, I walked across the stage and shook hands with everyone on the other side, and they were STILL rambling on about me. I'm proud of myself, sure, but I was also thinking to myself, "Oh my lord, how pretentious do I sound right now?" Especially when absolutely nobody else had more than two item mentioned after his/her name. Nobody else had a freakin' list. You'd think that SOMEBODY would be as big a nerd as me but no, apparently not. Apparently I win.
The most fun thing about graduation was that I got a front row seat since they graduate all the masters students first and my name is at the beginning of the alphabet. I was the seventh person to graduate today, which was nice because everyone was still really excited then and no one was bored yet. (The thing is, they got through this graduation ceremony extremely quickly. I remember my last graduation just drug on and on and on and by the end I was overheated and had a terrible headache and couldn't wait to get out of there. This morning, right about the time I thought to myself, "Okay, this is boring", it was over! Sweet.) The other benefit of the front row was that I got to critique everyone's shoes as they walked across the stage. The guy next to me was taking bets on whether or not each girl would fall in her heels. And I have to say, there are some really terrible shoes out there right now. When did Lucite become an acceptable material for Saturday morning shoes? Because I don't care what Marie Claire is telling me, Lucite still screams "stripper stacks" to me and always will.

So yes. It was a big day for me. I'm a master! Now it's onward and upward to the Ph.D.!