Looked at Clouds From Both Sides Now

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Wow. Wow. All through last night I kept saying ‘This is such an epic day!’ Except I’d put a lot of emphasis on epic so that I would sound like a douchebag. I said it a lot. I bet it was annoying. But it was true! From the day’s humble beginnings wherein I woke up far too early and determined that, no, I do not need to iron my dress shirt to the heady heights of the middle, waving a $30,000 paper tube in the air like a sword, filled with strange glee, to the day’s end, walking home with what felt like iron feet, way too tired for everything, cursing the invention of stairs: epic.

So epic in fact that it is impossible to capture in paragraph form! I will post pictures later, but I do want to make clear just how much I learned from this graduation ceremony. Looking at it objectively, the day of my graduation may have been the most enlightening of my university tenure.

Here are some things I learned:

How to pin a fur-lined hood onto a graduation gown. Sorta. I mean, no one really seemed to understand how to do this, but I think in the end we all knew more about pinning fur-lined hoods onto graduation gowns than we did beforehand. The trick, I found, was to stand still and get a girl to do it for you.
There are only three songs that can be played on a bagpipe, and none of them are “Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting.” The bagpipe player who led us down the street in a giant processional stuck to the bagpipe standards. That cat was nowhere near as fast as lightning.
You will get very very hot standing in a fur-lined gown in a room filled with 250 other people in fur-lined gowns. Don’t even think you won’t. It’s impossible.
Some parents are absolutely rabid about getting their child’s picture, especially on graduation day. These parents are utterly oblivious to the fact that there are only so many emotions and actions available to graduating students in long flowing robes. (”Look, honey, in this one you look happy! And in this one you look uncomfortable! And in this one you’re kind of shifting nervously! And in this one you’re glaring at me like you want me to leave!”) ((For the record, my parents are not like this.))
If your graduation ceremony is being captured on video tape, and you are sitting towards the front of the class, you are on camera the entire time. The camera will capture you doing things like staring into space, laughing inappropriately, playing an imaginary drum with your rolled-up degree, pretending your degree is a telescope and trying to murder the honourary graduates with your eye lasers. Video of all of this will be available to all parents after the ceremony. You will be the star. God, I wish I had realized this sooner.
Look, I understand it’s appropriate to be a little goofy up on the stage once you’ve accepted your degree. Stick your tongue out or do a little dance or something. But pretending to hit a homerun with your degree? Too far!
Latin is a dead fucking language and if they keep trying to bring it back I swear to God I will put another bullet in its head personally.
Don’t be smug and think your last name is simple enough that there is no way they’ll mess up the pronunciation. The inept official reading the names who almost gave me a law degree will find a way to get it wrong. There’s a whole litany of Gast-ohns, Kojickis, Bayslers and Patés providing exactly that.
The period directly after the graduation when all of the parents and students congregate on the lawn outside the church? You will be so confused throughout all of it.
You know what, after four years in Halifax, you do kind of like seafood.
Missing out on the morning routine makes getting through the night hard.
Stupid games are ridiculously fun. Like, you know that game where you say a memory to a person, wait for their reaction, then point at them accusingly and scream “NOSTALGIA!”? That game I invented just last night? It is really fun.
You graduated. You might as well dance. And, almost 15-years-later, the jump-up-and-down dance to Smells Like Teen Spirit is still the best showcase of your moves.
Everyone who’s Anyone knows the words to the opening part of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”
I could argue for the repeal of drunk driving laws. You know, if I wanted to.
I’ll never sleep enough to completely recover from this day.