Just something I was thinking about today, and I’m curious if I’m an outlier, or if I’m on the same page as everybody else.
It’s a big time of the year for graduations and weddings and it got me thinking about all the ceremonies. They are often long and drawn out and VERY expensive for whoever’s paying the bill, and I can’t stand them.
Just the idea of sitting for hours while somebody I don’t know talks and talks and talks until we finally get to the “I do” or the passing of the diplomas/awards that we came to see.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the celebration. I’m more than happy to come out and congratulate you on your achievement and make some good memories with friends and family, but why can’t we just skip to that part instead of sitting through a series of lectures?
I even skipped my own college graduation because I didn’t see any point in making me and my family sit through the ceremony. They know I graduated, and I don’t need some big expensive to-do and a spotlight to validate that.
But, we keep doing them, and keep making them bigger and more elaborate than before, so it makes me wonder if people actually appreciate these ceremonies or if it’s just something we do because that’s how it’s been done.
So I feel like I might have an interesting perspective on this…
All throughout college, I saw graduation similar to how you talk about it. I basically thought I’d show up drunk with my buddies, it would take half the day, and then it’d be over. Maybe I’d actually walk, maybe not.
For context, I graduated in the Spring of 2020, right when COVID first was becoming a thing. My graduation ceremony was cancelled, and replaced by a Facebook Live stream. Same speakers and similar speeches to what had been expected, but really none of the pomp and circumstance.
Now if you would’ve asked me earlier in my college career how I would’ve felt about my graduation ceremony being cancelled, I probably would’ve just shrugged it off. But it actually happened. And I find myself feeling like there is something missing from my time at college. Like there was no real sense of closure for the 4 years I spent there, the countless late nights in the library studying for insanely difficult exams, no real send off for the friends I had in the class outside my close circle.
So I feel differently about graduations now. There’s always going to be extremes, people who take them way too far. But I see the ceremonies themselves as the way for people (friends, families, professors, etc) to show how proud they are of the accomplishments of the students. And I feel like there’s wisdom in acknowledging that the ceremony is how they are trying to express that sentiment to you, and receiving it as intended.
Despite having a poor substitution for a graduation, do you have any sort of pride or feel exclusivity for being part of “The class without a graduation”?
I don’t mean you’re using it as a pick up line or anything, but just like a “yeah, I was there”.