..subtle

Like all other graduating bloggers, I graduated!  Yippy!  I have felt the 'normal' emotions of graduation- pride, success, completion, love, regret, sadness, possibility... I have cried a few times for various reason, both good and bad, and on the other side of the festivities I can say that I am glad that they happened and happy that they are over.  Now for the thank-you notes.

These were the highlights of my graduation experience:

• Listening to my dad tell three different people about his fantasy of me gorging myself on Dick's hamburgers behind a dumpster.
• Riding bicycles to graduation with 20 of my friends. It was quite celebratory and appropriate.
• My graduation dress.  Vintage Goodwill makes my heart flutter.
• Watching John Perkins receive an honorary doctorate.  I think it was the happiest moment of my whole weekend.
• Watching women get their Ph.D's.  I cried a little bit.
• Feeling so proud and honored to watch my friends graduate. They are quality people and my college experience was so rich because of them.
• Walking across the stage knowing that I have been changed in many ways, and that receiving a diploma is not going to be the pinnacle of my existence.
• Watching Cory drink beer during our commencement. 
• My parents meeting Nikki.
• Taking small group photos to a very large audience of onlookers. This moment was very intense after having lived four years together and realizing that our lives will forever be ebbing and flowing in relationship. I feel so grounded and full when I am with them.
• Stellar Pizza, our awesome waitress who was so on top of things. Amazing pizza, good beer, sitting next to my liberal aunt and laughing at my family. Photobooths and a really funny graduation poem.  Being in Seattle and walking around Georgetown, trespassing on a restaurant my mother had discovered.  It was surprisingly relaxed, civil, and fun.
• My grandma announcing that she had 'ARRIVEN!'.
• Watching pizza fall of my parents car, my uncle stop in the middle of the road, right after a blind corner, to pick it up.
• How much of a champion Alex was with my family/endless events.  Good, mild-manner social skills can be so hott sometimes.
• Feeling entirely unstressed about finances, college loans, getting a job, or my future.

The surprising feeling this weekend was how subtle it was.  Perhaps the reverberations of this huge life change will come later when I realize that people are actually gone, that I am actually graduated, and that I have actually begun a new chapter in my life.  But right now things don't feel so epic, I don't feel blinded by joy or paralyzed by fear.  I feel happy and content, excited and curious for what will happen next.  Maybe it's because many of my friends have graduated and 'survived the real world' for several years now, which makes it seem like less of a cliff to me.  I think that this is part of it, but I also think that my current state of being reflects many of the ways that I have changed over the last few years.

I don't feel like I have stopped learning now that I am a graduate (that might be because I have an essay to write still, shit).  If anything, college graduation felt very similar to high school graduation- much more of a comma than a period.  I don't feel like I have necessarily arrived at anything triumphant, but I do feel accomplished and ready for the next part of my life.  I am most excited for a few weeks of pause, to get glasses, go to the dentist, have lazy afternoons in my backyard, and to laugh freely with people I really like.

I have also been thinking about reflection and if its a meaningful practice.  It is in many ways, but I also think it's a good way to over emphasize normal maturity and make trite accomplishments the end all, be all of human existence.  The 'reflection' that makes me most excited is that I have been radically changed in profoundly subtle ways and have become a better human being.  These changes are things that I never want to fully know, I just want them to be true in my life.