Last Thursday, I graduated. And it was pretty great! I wore a suit and a robe and a funny hat that made me feel like I was balancing a dinner plate on my head. And whilst what I said last week still holds true and I perhaps didn’t feel as accomplished or worthy as some of the other people at graduation, I still had a damn good time and did manage to muster some semblance of pride in myself. It was wonderful to see my uni friends again to compare congratulatory hats, and overall it’ll probably go down as one of the best days of my life.
The craziest thing for me was that I wasn’t nervous. At all. And that’s kind of a big deal for me, because I’m the kind of guy who does get nervous about these things. When I first showed up and didn’t know where to go for a minute, I was a lil’ insecure, but that’s mostly because I don’t like looking lost and alone. And then my hat started to fall off mid-ceremony so there was some anxiety about it deciding to venture off to pastures new mid-handshake as I was on stage, but a quick re-adjustment whilst still sat down took care of that potential calamity. And besides that, it was smooth sailing. I don’t think I’ve felt confident at any public event in my life but something kept me calm, and I think it was the knowledge that I belonged there.
Of course, the issue with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing is that there aren’t exactly many job opportunities waiting for you when you step out of the sanctuary of purpose that is university work. As I discussed last week, I’ve found a surprising level of meaning in the job that I currently have, and it’s only proven to me that my path in life is going to stray from writing for perhaps a little while, while I sort things out. There are many aspects to each individual, and whilst I’ve dedicated an entire university course to writing over the last three years, that’s not the entirety of who I am as a person. It’ll always be a core part of who I am, though, and I’ll continue to express myself via blog posts and other little writing projects before I reach a time in my life when I start to dedicate more time to it.
Perpetually Perturbed 