I recently graduated college: May something-or-other, 2009. The ceremony was utter shit. Due to time restrictions (as I graduated in a class of how ever many people were fucking there), there were no inspiring speeches, no valedictorian telling me how great her life was because she is a fucking genius but we may still aspire to a greatness somewhere in the vicinity of hers. No guests like Dennis Rodman or Marlon Brando’s clone to tell us to live out our dreams of becoming magicians or dairy farmers or porno directors. The president of our university, whom I had never seen before in my life, stood in front of us and said that names would be read. Then names were read, and the ceremony was over. It was a waste of three hours of my life.
And yet, I’m kind of glad for those wasted three hours. I’m glad because people I haven’t spoken to in years sent me checks because I sat in that auditorium and was handed some bullshit piece of paper. I’m glad because it was another excuse to get completely wasted that night. Mostly, I’m glad because those were three more hours that I got to be a student. There aren’t a lot of redeemable things about school, but being a student is one of the best possible statuses one might obtain. It is a freedom from responsibility. It is a barrier against what has been coined “the real world.” It is an excuse to get wasted.
I am no longer a student. After those three hours, my status changed, in a split second. I am now an unemployed 22 year old living with his parents. I am now a man with a useless degree doing nothing with his life. I am now labeled irresponsible when I consider an occasion “an excuse to get wasted.” And I’m not happy with any of it.
I didn’t ask to be thrown head-first into this economic climate, a climate in which real people can’t even get jobs, let alone English majors. But such is life, they say. For now, I’ll just keep writing to Cinemax applying for some good old fashioned porno directing gigs and keep trying to make this fucking quarter disappear.
Written by Dignan
