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.

So I passed all of my classes. This means I can graduate!

Let me be clear: in no way was I expecting to fail any of my classes this semester. However, I wasn't expecting to do so well this semester (3.9 GPA). When I got my grades on my iPhone in the middle of an aisle while shopping at Target, I sort of laughed and said, "Well, that's boring" and promptly continued shopping. (I've been shopping around for furniture and the like for my new apartment. More on that later.)

The past month has been very busy--one of the busiest months of my life. I'm still coming down from all of the busting of my butt to get it all done. In due time, I will share everything from finals to papers to posters to graduation (this Sunday, May 22nd, at 1:30PM) to moving into my new apartment and starting my 5th year, all in good time.

I got my cap and gown yesterday (sup, Honors?). My hood, although very complicated-looking (everyone on Facebook was complaining about how odd it was), is quite handsome and I will look like a complete boss on commencement day. I will be sure to have a ton of pictures--a whole photo album worth--from graduation up the following day or so.

Be back soon!