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Retrospect
Graduation went smoothly. Four hours in a sweltering black cap and gown, and the culmination of my college career was over. Nothing in particular stood out in my mind when I look back on the event -- simply because it was a ceremony designed to process a mass quantity of students in a short period of time -- but, like most things in life, it wasn't any particular event but the people I was with that I remember the most.
I came late to the organizational pre-ceremony and was placed near the end of the engineering line. Viola Lee and Adam Davis were at the end of the line with me, and later Henrietta joined us. The hour we spent waiting for the exercises to begin was filled with smiles, anxious small-talk and playful banter. Waiting is great when you have people to spend it with. The time slipped past us relatively unnoticed, and we finally began filing into the large auditorium to my high school's rendition of "Pomp and Circumstance."
Although there were thousands of students, I felt as though I were on the spot. I had made the mistake of wearing my glasses, forgetting that I couldn't see more than 500 feet in front of me, and blindly gazed into the crowds above me futily searching for friends and family. The thousands of students were directed on stage, one-by-one, and before long the entire graduating class had received empty frames.
I vaguely remember walking across stage. Mostly, I remember anxiously looking for my family right before I walked up. Chancellor Bunnel-Shade, who was handing out handshakes and frames, cocked her head at me as though she recognized me -- which she should have considering I've been introduced to her on four seperate occasions -- and smiled congratulations. Taking my "diploma," I quickly left the stage (I was the last one called, besides Viola), and waited patiently as the rest of the ceremony played out.
The auditorium quickly dissolved into a sticky mass of people. Navigating crowds in a cap and gown is harder than it looks; the tassel getting caught in your mouth and eyes, gown getting caught on other people. Swimming slowly through the crowds, I managed to make it outside where I met up with Daniel, Lindsay, Mom, Derek, Dad, and Kay. It was a relief to see everyone. Pictures were taken and we slowly headed out for the remaining day's festivities. The weather was beautiful, and we could not have asked for a better day.
Lunch with the office at Jose's. Nap. Dinner with the fam at the Cliff House. Gifts. From Mom, Mikasa flatware. From Lindsay, tickets to Moby. From Dad, an antique, leather-bound book collection:
- Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
- Charles Baudelaire - The Flowers of Evil
- Charlotte Bronté - Jane Eyre
- Emily Bronté - Wurthing Heights
- John Bunyan - The Pilgrim's Progress
- Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
- Stephen Crane - The Red Badge of Courage
- Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky - THe Brothers Karamazov
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Faust
- Thomas Hardy - The Return of the Native
- Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter
- Washington Irving - The Alhambra
- Henry James - The Portrait of a Lady
- Jack London - The Sea-Wolf
- Sir Thomas Malory - Le Morte D'Arthur
- Herman Melville - Moby Dick
- John Milton - Paradise Lost
- Guy de Maupassant - Various Tales
- Sir Walter Scott - The Talisman
- Sir Walter Scott - Ivanhoe
- Marie-Henri Beyle (Stendhal) - The Red and the Black
- Laurence Sterne - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.
- Ivan Turgenev - Fathers and Sons
- Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn
- Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire - Candide
- Oscar Wilde - Short Stories
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