The Post About Pricey Caps and Unflattering Gowns

Ahh... The smell of accomplishment. It's also the smell of paying your own bills and finding watermarked paper so your internships and workstudy jobs will seem more like...experience.

I love this time of year. It takes me back to my own college commencement. I was graduating from Emory University with a double major in Sociology and Women's Studies with a minor in African American Studies. (my conservative WASP-y Dad was super stoked.) 

Here are a couple of highlights of that weekend...

1. My commencement speaker was the Dalai Lama. Yes, that Dalai Lama. The best part was his holiness' speech lasted 9 minutes. Since the Georgia heat was bearing down on a couple thousand overdressed souls, he chose wisely.

2. Often, when you graduate you get a fake folder with no diploma inside (like the one you see to your left). But when you pay upwards of $35,000 a year in tuition, they're able to hire someone to coordinate it so you're handed your actual diploma. Unless you are Chris G., who was sitting next to me. He did the dance of going on stage, having his name called, hearing his family hoot and holler and then stopped for the memorial portrait. However, when he sat down, we simultaneously opened our folders. Mine had a shiny certificate that guaranteed me a difficult job search. His had a shiny letter that guaranteed him summer school since he had failed Chemistry.

What do you remember about graduating from college, high school, or kindergarten? 

Note: Kindergarten graduation is technically the dumbest event ever. Yeah, I said it.

{image: unknown, but overpriced photographer from Atlanta)