Graduation... Again

It's that time of life again. Time to graduate. To matriculate. Commence.

The term "commencement" has always seemed a bit ironic. Everybody thinks of graduation as the end of something, not the beginning. But as guidance counselors and parents correctly point out, commencement usually is a beginning, the start of a new era in that thing called Life. But not always. Sometimes it just feels like an end.

When I graduated from high school, I definitely felt that "ending". As a kid with good grades and poor social skills, I'd always been a loner, but in high school I finally had a small bunch of friends that I was pretty comfortable with. I even felt safe peeking out of the closet a little bit. I didn't fully grasp just how good - and transitory - it was, but I had an inkling. We were all heading to different colleges, and I knew that without seeing each other five days a week, we'd lose touch.

What got me through that was knowing that the adventure of college lay just ahead. I had to start from scratch making friends, but living in a dorm with a bunch of guys your own age is a bit like high school on steroids. To be honest, the crowd I fell in with included a lot of jerks I don't miss, but there were some gems in there as well. And I really got into the "student activities" scene, which I knew even then was something that wouldn't be available to me after graduation. The whole "peer group" social setting would be gone.

But just out of college I still had my whole adult life ahead of me, and the excitement of knowing that just about anything could still happen. Careers, relationships, activities... it was all a blank slate waiting for me to write on. That softened the blow of again having to graduate and leave something really good behind. After all, it was the late 80's and I had a degree in computer science, my health, and a drive to change the world.

After several years of being a reasonably successful, fairly happy computer geek, I decided to go back to college to study graphic design and illustration part-time. It was the late 90's and internet media looked like a good opportunity to have fun making money. But I wanted the academic grounding to do it right, even if it meant putting my "real" career in a holding pattern. I had some unrealistic expectations about how college would be similar to the previous time, but for the most part it met my expectations. I enjoyed the stuff I was learning, I enjoyed the casual social atmosphere of the classroom (even if my age placed me above and off to the side of it). Being the nearly as old as my teachers (and in a few cases, older) I got to know a few of them and stayed in touch with them even after I was done with their classes, by chatting with them in the halls.

But now comes another graduation, and I can see all that slipping away. Again. And this time, I don't have any real "commencement" to look forward to, to add some sweetness to the bitter. Sure, I'll get some free time back. But other than that, it'll be nothing new. Since the tech industry bombed and the job market overall sucks, all my years in college give me this time is several years of not "moving up" in my profession (actually back-sliding a bit). So I'll probably just continue with my current low-end tech job and the rest of my life as it is now. What little "networking" I've been able to do the past few years will disappear along with those hallway chats.

My last classes are this week. Next week I'll be at school putting up a display of some of my classwork as part of the college's "senior exhibition"... my first - and probably last - gallery show. That Saturday, I'll walk across the stage in my cap and gown, a slide of one of my illustrations will be projected for my peers and their families to admire, I'll get some good-luck handshakes from some former instructors, and that will be the end of that.

On Monday... back to work.