My Graduation

I had my official graduation ceremony this morning. I’ve been finished school for almost two months now so it was a little weird to go back to school. The ceremony itself was a little bit anticlimactic and impersonal. I handed a card to the speaker who read off my name and then I walked across stage and shook some hands. 30 seconds later it was over. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting but I knew I had to go just for the pictures. It was really interesting to see who was graduating with what degrees. You could tell who some of the fashion design graduates were by their style. The theatre graduates made the most noise as they crossed the stage. After the ceremony, my dad brought my girls to the campus. I wasn’t going to make them sit through 2 hours or a boring convocation, more importantly I wasn’t going to make my husband try to keep two kids quiet for two hours.



We can't even get them to sit still for 2 minutes for pictures.




I didn’t look at any of the pictures that were being taken and now I’m so mad at myself for not checking. I knew my flash was turned off and I asked if the person taking the pictures if they were getting good shots. They said they were but once I checked them at home I was so disappointed to see that there were shadows across my eyes in most photos. It was really sunny which isn’t great for photos.

I was feeling pretty good about my dean’s list standing and outstanding achievement designation until they announced the Excellence Award winner. A fellow mother with a GPA over 4.00. I didn’t even know you could do that. She had kids soon after finishing high school and then returned to school when they were a little older. She talked about how she had to find herself first and how it made her really appreciate her education. I tried to do it all at once though. I wasn’t going to let babies stop me from finishing school. I needed to prove that an unplanned pregnancy wasn’t going to ruin my life. So I did it. I’ve spent the last 5 years in school while having 2 babies. I’m glad I did it but I know that I wasn’t able to completely dedicate myself to school or to being a mom. Schoolwork kept me up late and made me a cranky mom sometimes, being a breastfeeding mother made me rush home after every class instead of getting to know fellow students or my teachers. Now I’ve got a piece of parchment in hand and will be trying to figure out what to do with it. I know I’ll go to school again at some point. I love learning, it’s the assignments, papers and exams I could do without. I hope I’ve inspired my girls to go to university one day, they already have the hat.