Final Days
I’m getting ready to pass out after a marathon of writing and studying. Tomorrow I’ll take an exam and turn in my final paper. I can’t believe I am hours away from ending my academic career. It doesn’t seem possible that it is over so quickly.
I have never attended any of my graduation ceremonies to date. In high school I was competed in horse shows which required a lot of travel. My senior year coincided with my final year in the juvenile division and I was aiming for a shot at the World Championship title in my division. An important show leading up to Worlds fell on the weekend of my graduation. I picked the horse show. With no regrets, I took my exams early and missed all of the end of the year festivities. By that point I had skipped all sorts of traditional high school events in lieu of horse shows so it didn’t feel unusual.
In my last semester of college I moved to Tallahassee to work in the FL Legislature. Conveniently, the final day of the legislative session, Sine Die, was on the same day as graduation. Sine Die is fully of drama and laden with traditional and there was no way I was missing it. I reasoned that because I was graduating early, without my friends, in a school with almost 50,000 students, I surely wouldn’t be missing out on anything special. I would have been one of thousands of students graduating that same night. Instead, I watched part of it on the web via a live feed. I got bored with it and went back to watching something more interesting, the House and Senate fighting over the budget.
I’m now a few days away from my law school graduation. In all honesty, I can’t believe I made it. It all flew by so quickly. I suppose a lot of grads feel this way when they move on from college and into the real world. I guess I never took the time to let it sink in between college and law school. But alas, here I am, slightly hesitant to admit its over but so very ready to be done! For the record, I have plans to show up to graduation this time. In fact, I am kind of excited about it. For the first time I allowed myself to really get connected to the school and I will be sad to leave this place. On that note I suppose I should get some sleep and get ready for my exam tomorrow. It’s the only thing standing in my way at this point.
Shit. I’m an adult.
