 |
Archives August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
The reason why I haven't written anything about graduation and the UP LAE interview, as soon as I got home that day, was plain and simple. It's like when you're dreaming and you're not aware that you are. For me, it took some time before I realized that this time it was real and not just imagine. I really did go up the stage and curtsy. I did pass UP LAE and will go to law school come next school year. I did graduate from UP, a university that I only dreamt of when I was a kid. In short, my childhood dreams, my answer to the what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up question is slowly coming to fruition.
I want to write about my graduation but I am not sure if I should begin by writing about the entire journey or by simply writing about the feeling of standing in front of our college dean and receiving my fake diploma and a medal for having graduated cum laude.
If I write from the beginning, it would certainly be too long. My four years in college were, as the cliche would put it, an emotional roller coaster ride. Every event seemed to have progressed to another, rolled and balled into one day that was my graduation.
If I begin by writing about the feeling then I am sure none of you would be able to understand or sympathize. As I stood there, I did not have a "moment" as one may call it. I walked through it as gracefully as possible--mind you I had already been wearing two-inch heels for over three hours and my feet were nearly dying--and curtsied before proceeding to get my diploma. I walked towards Dean Zosimo Lee who asked me if we had seen each other in Miriam (my high school). Beside him was the Honorable Juan Miguel Luz who, as I found out in the broadsheet days later, honorably resigned after having exposed a bribery scandal in the Department of Education.
Hon. Juan Miguel Luz asked me what my plans were after graduation, and then there it was, the gnawing fear that was triggered by a question that I hoped I had an answer for. You see, before we marched to our seats, my friends told me that the results of the UP LAE interview were out. "I am going straight to Law school," I said hurriedly, so as to avoid any "where" questions that might come up which I believe my mother took care of with a brief but ambiguous answer.
Unlike many of us, I probably wouldn't have any lasting memories of my two minutes of near-fame on the stage of the UP theatre. The medal I received now hangs alongside many other medals I have received frm playing basketball for nine years. The fake diploma is probably lying in a dumpster nearby, waiting to be picked by scavengers who would sell it along with heaps and heaps of junk. The souvenir programme which, as the name implies, should have been kept as a souvenir, fell to the floor at one point during the ceremony and is now lying around in god knows where. I did not care to pick it up, what with the many things hanging on my dress--the sablay, a corsage, ribbons for the photographer--and the fear that my corset dress would burst open with all the extra weight I gained during the holy week.
The only feeling I could remember is how I was sure I have grown up and how scared it made me feel but that's the kind of feeling everyone feels when they come to the end of a long ride.
So I guess that's it. Graduation was nothing but a final twist in my roller coaster ride. It was the last upside-down loop followed by a deep plunge. Lie most roller coaster rides, you do not really remember much. You remember how you thrashed and screamed but you do not remember--and would not be able to explain--how exhilarating it was despite the nausea. If anything, you would remember that, although you did not go through the entire ride gracefully, you got off in one piece.
When you grow up and you sit down for coffee and reminisce with friends, and they laugh at you and remind you how stupid the entire ride seemed and how even more stupid you looked, your retort would be that, "It was a good thing I had the courage to take the ride."
posted by The Lonely Joker who stares too deeply & too much at 7:41 PM
0 Comments: