Thoughts on Graduation
I'm the last resident of Barrett Hall. The building is empty. The campus is empty. My steps echo off the bare walls.
In the beginning of the year, I liked this emptiness. It was nice to have the whole place to myself: the paths, the gardens, the buildings. I felt like I owned the College. But now it's a sad emptiness. Sad because I know it's no longer mine. Never again will I return to campus and really feel that sense of ownership. All I'll have is nostalgia.
College graduation is so different than high school graduation, and I think a lot of it has to do with these places. What did I have in high school? I lived in my room at home, attended school in a government building with prison-like windows and dusty, dark hallways. It's hard to feel a sense of belonging in a place like that. My whole world was so broken up: school was 20 minutes away from home, my friends were 15 minutes away, the places we hung out another 10 minutes. But here it's all in one place: my room, my classes, my friends, my hangouts. This one square mile has become my WORLD, my everything. Leaving it is like leaving Earth for strange, barren planets. What other place can be this full of life?
But this astronaut can never return to Earth. I've been banned. That's what graduation does, really. It bans you from ever returning in the same capacity. I remember when I saw recent alums around campus in the fall. "Didn't you graduate?" I'd ask. I remember one friend saying, "Why does everyone ask that?!? Yes, but aren't I allowed to come back?" Of course, but in some sense, no. You can visit, but you can never truly come back.
I've been launched into that large, dark, cold space beyond the College's gravitational pull. Graduation is a strange rite of passage; you're passing, but onto what? Rites of passage usually bestow a new social status on the participant; upon conferring my degree, President Revely welcomed me to "the community of educated men and women," but that's a large and scary community, not small and cozy like William and Mary. My new social status is nebulous and undefined.
And that's been my general feeling these past two days. I didn't cry, I had no teary-eyed goodbyes. But I've been very... empty.
I'd never felt more full than this year. I can easily say that it was the best year of my life. I learned so much, met so many new people, deepened friendships with those closest to me. Leaving it behind is hard. But as my friend Josh put it, "Then you'll just have to to beat this year next year. And the year after that. And the year after that."
I'll try and hold to that.