graduation
I'm sick. It's graduation and I am sick! of course this is how I pictured today? I wake up sweating, snot filled nose, fever...I mean I wake aspirating, secretion filled sinuses, and pyrexia; sometimes I feel my education has only allowed me say the same thing using different words, for me "medical terminology". Morganne my girlfriend of few weeks now is next to me in bed. She leaves earlier than usual to avoid my parents but she tells me how she is not going to walk for her graduation. I tell her it may be different if I wasn't in this small program and we are all so close to each other, like I'm trying to convince myself I have to go?....although I'd love to stay in bed and get over this cold. My parents finally arrive, earlier, as usual. My mom finds grapes in my fridge that Morganne bought at Whole Foods the night before and impatiently washes and bags them for a graduation snack, without asking. My parents and brother go to the arena and I meet my classmates at our college COHPA. Only a few are there, only to find some other class stole our meeting place. My classmates around me talk about interviews, I can not join their conversation....I have yet been called for interview, although I'm not really looking. We walk to the arena together all complaining about the heat, it is hot and humid and breezeless we have ever right to complain in our uncomfortable clothes, the tight collars and ties chocking our necks, and black pants suffocating our legs. We sit. We wait in one room of the arena only to sit and wait in the next. The commencement speaker for our college is some important government lady with a Carolina accent that turns your attention off from all she is saying. Until she said one mistaken letter the letter that spreads Awes throughout the arena...".....(southern accent)....USF" what was that!! did she just say USF the awes morph into boo's. The problem is she didn't realize it at all until she said it again just a few minutes later....and now everyone is listening to every word she says. The second time the crowd is talking and booing and gasping. "maybe I should just get off" Get off! someone screams. it was amusing and spoke truly of our college. of what UCF is and may always be. UCF and orlando is just a city that wants to be something else. to be another city and university. this is why they dropped my program one of the oldest and only Respiratory Bachelor degree programs in the U.S. some of my classmates had to sit away from our group and they were announced in the College of Nursing. I didn't hear their names announced but they not announced after us. so I told Milo. he texted "hi nurse" to Mike O. He quickly texted back "FU UCF sucks”. I text everyone to meet in the front of the arena for one last group photo…everyone scatters and meets their parents and leave. So no group photo! Ha. During most of the car ride home mom complains. they took her grapes and water away because the arena did not allow food or drinks in. on the way to Italian place I made reservations for but was empty when we got there, my dad looks over to me and puts his hand on my back and says “welcome to the civil life, you are no longer a student” then my mom yells, “you better get a job!”