Graduation: the end of my childhood, and the beginning of being grown up

I graduated! With honors even!

I have to say, even though graduation was much longer than anticipated, it was a lot more fun than I was expecting. Our commencement speaker, Alan Khazei, is a very interesting person and gave an as interesting speech. Mr. Khazei received an honorary degree as did our former university president, our beloved John Bassett. Heaps of pictures from graduation have been posted to Clark's Flickr page, and I encourage you to check them out! I really like a lot of them, and I feel like they accurately display all of the positive energy and emotion of our graduation.

To begin, here are a few pictures of yours truly at graduation:

Just after I was awarded by degree, my friend (who received his accelerated Master's degree) waved at me frantically for a picture as I walked off stage. (His friend took the above picture, however.)

After the ceremony, the campus green was much more of a clusterbunch than I had anticipated, so it was really hard to get pictures with anyone! Here I'm with one of my best friends (Rich), acting all silly like.

I tried my best to recreate one of my first pictures ever on the Clark campus (from Week One)...

...the day I graduated. Props for effort though, right?

It's really hard to imagine that it's already been four great years at Clark! Looking back through my first year pictures on Facebook (while trying to find the above picture) made me realize how fast it's really been. I'm not even halfway done with my combined undergraduate/graduate studies though. From here, it's going to be so much different, but I honestly feel that Clark has prepared me for that. Additionally, by staying a fifth year to complete my Master's, I'll be all set for a Ph.D. program. Interestingly enough, finding a set of Ph.D. programs to suit me is very high on my list of things to do this summer.

Graduation made me realize how much I admire and appreciate Clark for being Clark. So much effort is placed into our mission as a university to educate, inspire, and help the surrounding community that I can honestly be extremely proud to be an alum. I often feel that Clark doesn't get half the recognition it should, but that's not the topic of today's post.