In honor of graduation season, I’ve decided to share with everyone the unforgettable mass of emotions that combined to create the day I became a college graduate.
Enjoy this (approximate) timeline of the historic day:
8:00 AM: Arrive at the Superdome. Wait around for an hour until it’s time for the ceremony. I remember standing behind the curtain, getting ready to walk to our seats, when anxiety suddenly decided to take over my entire body: I started sweating and trembling and forgot how to breathe. In the moment, I didn’t know what was wrong with me. After it was all over, I realized I had come to some startling revelations, such as the fact that I was about to leave school, possibly forever, with thousands of dollars in debt and no idea what I want to do with my life. I won’t go to class anymore, which is all I’ve done for the past 19 years. I’ll have to make all new friends as the current ones will be scattered across the country/world. I’ll get to pay tons of bills, apply to thousands of jobs to never hear back from them, and age rapidly. Except instead of my brain realizing this first, my body did.
8:58 AM: Gracefully sprint to the bathroom — another mistake! Guess what the bathroom is full of during a commencement ceremony? Concerningly drunk girls, stumbling around like giggling zombies before throwing up in the sink. It’s very difficult to put up with this kind of environment when you’re drowning in your own sobering existential crisis. Why are they so happy and oblivious?? Did they somehow manage to actually pay for their college experience instead of enlisting the help of my dear pal Sallie Mae? Why aren’t they worried about finding healthcare??
9:05 AM: A woman comes in and yells at everyone to leave the bathroom, the speeches are about to start. She looks condescendingly at all the girls as they are still stumbling around, pouring water on their faces, and burping. I want to tell her that I’m not sick because I drank too much, I’m sick because I don’t know anything about retirement funds, but I don’t. I leave the bathroom because there’s no way I’m going to miss Helen Mirren’s motivational speech to me, and also the confetti that I know will fall from the dome’s sky. I’m not missing that confetti.
9:20 AM: Topsy Chapman sings, and I feel a little better. Helen says lots of inspiring things, but I can only half concentrate on her because I have to relearn how to breathe.
9:40 AM: Other people talk, but I don’t know what they said. I focus really hard on not throwing up/passing out/crying/slumping to the floor, because how embarrassing would that be?? The anxiety of that possible terrible outcome outweighs the anxiety already bubbling inside of me, so I just stare at a TU flag for an hour and sing “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” in my head in Louis’s voice.
(I would like to point out that, looking back, other people were actually already passed out/slumping to the floor due to their intoxication, so maybe I would have blended in just fine.)
10:15 AM: It’s over! The confetti comes! And it’s beautiful, and I’m very happy to be sitting between my two longest Tulane friends, and for a second I feel A-OKAY!
10:35 AM: I tell my mother I can’t possibly walk across the stage to get my diploma because my brain has gone to war against my body, and this is the best and worst day of my entire life, but my mother says she came 1,000 miles to see me walk across that stage and over her dead body is she missing out on it. So I walk across the stage anyway (quite gracefully, thank you).
2:00 PM: I stand victoriously in front of the Superdome, (pictured below), after running barefoot through the dome’s tunnels (I’m not a savage, I just chose the wrong shoes to wear for this 6-hour ordeal) trying to find another bathroom and watching my family eat the celebratory sheet cake offered.
Don’t I look so happy and carefree?!
About 5 minutes after this picture was taken, I accidentally swung a point of my grad cap into my eye so hard it was as if I had kebobbed it, and my eyes stung so badly I couldn’t physically open them. My mother had to lead me to the sidewalk, where I then used the sweater off her back to wipe up the snot that was dripping from my face due to the eye injury. Oh, and my feet were bleeding. I genuinely wish this had been photographed as well, but my mother actually loves me and probably knew I’d post that disturbing picture everywhere instead of this one where I look normal and accomplished.
So to recap: I’m very grateful that I graduated from college and my entire family witnessed the event, but I’ve never felt so engulfed in anxiety in my entire life (which is really saying something, because I radiate anxiety on a daily basis).
If the image of me crumpled in front of the Superdome barefoot, using my mother’s Loft cardigan as a tissue and her sunglasses so people can’t see my bloodshot, damaged eyes while my hands cling to my empty diploma holder doesn’t scream “successful college graduate,” I don’t know what would.
Good luck out there, grads.
P.S. After this ordeal was over, we went to Company Burger, so this story has a happy ending.
Memoirable Moments 