Without Honors

Well, it's official, I am a college graduate.

This is the fourth graduation of my life.

Graduation One, 5th grade: I was the best student in my class. My pop bought me a $75 polyester suit from Mays' department store just for the occasion. Looking back, I bet my mom put him up to that.

Graduation Two, 8th grade: I was just happy that it was over. Don't even really remember the ceremony.

Graduation Three, High School: this was the one I remember best. Lots of friends around, a real feeling of accomplishment in the air, along with a weird sense that things were about to change forever. For me, the thing I remember best was the fear that I wouldn't get called to the stage for my fake diploma because I had failed too many classes. My stomach was turning all day. Especially after my girlfriend's essay was chosen by Mr. McCourt as some super-outstanding work of literature and she got to read it at the ceremony in front of 2000 people or whatever it was. If my name had not been called after that, I think I would have died on the spot. Or just excused myself and never come back, never spoken to any of my friends again. But it all worked out.

And now Graduation Four, College. Again I took it down to the wire. I signed up for a mid-level Geology class this semester and I blew it off nearly every single time it met. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I took the class because I had an intro level Geology course sophomore year and I dug it. Got an A, read some awesome papers by Stephen Jay Gould, figured maybe Geology was my bag. It turned out not to be, and I really had trouble concentrating this semester. It was a weird six months, you know?

So I pretty much got destroyed by this class because I didn't go. And I was actually worried that I might fail. If I failed, I was graduationally fucked on two different levels: one, I needed the class for my science requirement, and two, I needed the three credits to meet the minimum of 120 overall needed to graduate.

It was touch and go. Adding to the stress was the fact that my whole fractured family was coming out here for my graduation. Mom, Pop, Sis. We haven't all spent a night together under one roof since maybe 1978. Until now. And here I was faced with another potential no-name-call graduation.

I knew they were posting our grades outside the classroom on Monday afternoon, so I hopped on my moped and rode out into the 22 degree day, over to Weeks Hall on Dayton Street. It's only about three blocks from my apartment but I'd rather be frozen solid on the moped for two minutes than frozen solid on foot for ten. These are the lessons learned over 4 and half years in Madison, Wisconsin. I got to Weeks and walked over to where the grades were posted, and I found my social security number on the list. I got a fucking "D" in geology. My first collegiate "D" in my very last course. So my final tally is: 120 credits, 360 grade points. A "B" student on the damn nose.

Then as soon as I managed to exhale and convince myself that I was going to graduate (does a "D" count as a passing grade? my roommate Milo tells me he "thinks it does"), yesterday the kin arrived and brought three suitcases full of familial tension with them. It's been really nice seeing them but to be honest there've already been like twenty-six awkward conversational lulls since they showed up. Still, they deserve to be here so they can see what happened to the $50,000 they laid out over the last four years.

And the ceremony this afternoon was painless. Luckily, my man DB and I got to sit together with the rest of the journalism grads, and we cracked jokes to each other throughout the whole boring thing. Jeff Greenfield gave a speech. Not a bad speech, but for a school this size you'd think they could pull a bigger name. DB had his red cloth on, God Bless Him. Graduating with Honors. Me, Graduating with Relief. Is there a cloth for that?

But we both got our names called and we stopped right in front of Donna Shalala for three seconds and did our stupid little Magic-Bird fist slap maneuver for the entire Field House to see. That was fun. The best moment of the day came when they read out the name "John Belushi" among the graduates.

Tomorrow I'm heading back to NYC with the whole family for Christmas, and I'll be without computer access that whole time (six days). Then I'm coming back here and I guess in the first few days of the New Year I'll decide what I'm going to do with my life.

Should I already have a job?