On May 14, 1995, I completed four years of undergraduate education at the College of William & Mary in Virginia (that is its official name). In many ways, it feels like yesterday as the years since I went to college have gone by much faster than the years leading up to college. And yet, I also feel that I have changed quite a bit in the intervening years.
I was so anxious then but more confident in myself now. Conversely, I was more social then but much more comfortable spending time alone now. Even when it comes to learning, I look back and am appalled at how slapdash I was in studying and research. And yet I learned things at the time that I could expound upon at length, that I can’t remember anything about now. Oh, and that whole thing about getting more conservative as you get older? Not true. I’ve moved much farther to the Left as I’ve become increasingly cognizant of the woes of the world.
Anyhow, here is what I remember about that Sunday (which was also Mother’s Day) when I officially became a college graduate:
- It rained. On the traditional walk across campus from the William & Mary’s historic Wren Building to the William & Mary Hall arena, the heavens unleashed a deluge of biblical proportions. Graduation gowns provide absolutely no protection from the rain.
- We were warned about increased security because of our commencement speaker (see below), but no one really checked us at all.
- Former President George Bush spoke. I’ve always been grateful that he kept his remarks short, not least because it was uncomfortable sitting in damp robes. He mentioned “a kinder, gentler nation” and “a thousand points of light,” castigated the NRA (to great cheers, even in Virginia), and told a joke about a long commencement speech at Yale. In this yarn the speaker expounded on a word starting with each letter in YALE for 30 minutes each. The punchline is a student praying to “thank God I didn’t go to The College of William & Mary in Virginia).
- After the main ceremony, we went to the diploma ceremonies hosted by each discipline. I double-majored, and chose to receive my diploma at the English department ceremony rather than History (I can’t remember why, but it was a good choice, because my friend who went to History said they bungled the ceremony).
- My mother hosted a reception for friends and families. My sister had too much punch and introduced herself as my brother.
And that’s about all I can remember about that day. I was a college graduate. Four months later I started working as an historical interpreter at Colonial Williamsburg. Three years later I moved to Boston. Five years later I started working in a library. Nine years later I received a master’s degree in Library and Information Science. Ten years later I got married. Twelve years later I became a Dad. Sixteen years later I had two kids. And now, here we are twenty-five years later!
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