On Graduating

Wednesday was my last class of college ever. I don't really feel like I've graduated from anything. I had predicted that I'd feel sad and start to cry as I walked from class, got in my car and drove away, but it wasn't as exciting as all that. I exchanged phone numbers with a girl I'd had several classes with throughout the year and made plans to go to coffee, then got in my car and drove away. I did not feel verklempt in any way.

I did have a bunch of homework to email to my professor by Thursday, so I did one assignment Wednesday night (in which I had to revise an academic article to make it sound cleaner and clearer. It was fun. I got to feel like I was really sticking it to this Cambridge professor whose style of writing includes too much metadiscourse such as "What we have here is" and "Very well, let us have another look at" that just makes me cringe). On Thursday I had to email one more essay to my professor and that was it. It was all pretty anticlimactic.

I did learn some things this year that weren't taught in class:

• Getting straight As at BSU is not difficult. There's really no reason I didn't have a better GPA for my college career than utter laziness.
• Course loads are supposedly easier and more manageable there than at more "difficult" schools. I think this is probably a crock, but seriously, three papers and a presentation is not too much for one class.
• Professors love me. Except for one I had several years ago; but I was very lazy in that class and she is notoriously difficult.
• If you can never hang out because you always have homework, some friends might lose interest in you.
• I saw this happen a few years ago to someone else, and I was one of the scoffers who couldn't understand the idea of having too much homework even to hang out on weekends. But it does happen, especially when you have to read 30 books in one semester. I apologize for any former scoffing I may have done to people about this.
  
• One night of socialness during Spring Break may be all the socialness you can manage in a semester. And at that point, you may just have a few drinks and talk everyone's ears off about the 20 or so books you've read so far in the semester. Especially The Master and Margarita.
  
• I also discovered I can't hang out on weeknights. Not when I have to go to work at 7am. No way. Not even when I have to go to work at 8am. It really sucks when all social events take place on weeknights.
• I don't like be out all weekend, and I can't stay awake past 11 when I do go out. I used to go out every weekend night when I was younger, and the idea of a night home made me ridiculously depressed. Now I only like to go out on Friday or Saturday, but not both, and I don't really like to do much on Sundays other than have breakfast with someone. My condo is pretty and I like to be here.
• I will probably never find another book that I love as much as The Master and Margarita.
• I think reading it was one of the things I had to accomplish before I die. I don't mean that everyone needs to specifically read The Master and Margarita before they die (though they should), but I do think everyone probably has at least one work of art that they need to come into contact with to make their life complete in some way. That's really vague, but I think I will save this for a later blog entry.
• M&M has introduced me to a whole new genre of literature and period of history to be obsessed with (writers oppressed by Stalin/Stalinist Russia).
• Don't publish things to your blog and then think nobody reads it. They do.

To celebrate my graduation, I invited some people to join me at the Modern Thursday night and the plan was to end up at the Neurolux later. I got to the Modern at 6 and met some friends and started drinking gin and sodas in the hot, hot sun. Gin and sodas in very large glasses. Round about 10:30, I felt sick and threw up in the trash can around the corner from the Modern's patio, right next to the ice machine. I had to call a cab and go home. My friends went on to the Neurolux where there were other people whom I wanted to see. I got home and started sending them embarrassing text messages about someone who was there with them and whom I have a crush on. In short, I behaved much more like a 20-year-old than a 30-year-old. Then I was sick all day Friday, which was my body reminding me that I am 30 and not 20.

I learned some things from this as well:

• It is not a good idea to drink a bottle-plus of gin in 4 hours. Especially when you hardly ever drink otherwise.
• Don't eat browned-butter and mizithra pasta before you go out drinking.
• Expensive drinks exist for a reason: to keep you from overdoing it by not allowing you to afford very many of them. In other words, drink expensive drinks.
• 9 pm is a much better time to start drinking than 6 pm.
  
• Foreign guys love me.
• If you celebrate something important to you like graduation and some of your friends are really enthusiastic for you while others can't be bothered to respond to your invitation, then you should probably focus on building friendships with the people who are happy for you.
• Mad Men is really good and makes for good hangover watching.
  

So, maybe I will feel more like I've graduated when I actually get my diploma in the mail. Or if I decide to walk in December. Anyway, woo-hoo graduation!