Some Thoughts on Graduation

Well, I graduated from Calvin College yesterday and even 24 hours later, it still doesn't feel real! My whole college career was leading up to teacher certification, not necessarily graduation. Every form I filled out, every grade requirement met, every proficiency test passed, and every field experience completed was for that certificate with my name on it that says "yup, this woman can teach Spanish." I wasn't even THINKING about graduation most of the time. And then like a whirlwind, graduation week was upon me.

Another reason that I wasn't thinking about my own graduation is that this year is the year that my brother graduates from high school. His open house was the topic of discussion for at least a month leading up to it and he received a steady stream of cards in the mail. I'm not saying that I'm bitter about all the attention he got, but it certainly helped me to forget about my own graduation.

Before graduation, however, Calvin held a Teacher Commissioning Ceremony for all the teacher graduates. This seemed a lot more real than graduation because it was all about the Education Department, which has been the focus of my studies pretty much all along. All the profs and faculty were there, we had an absolutely fabulous speaker (Gary D. Schmidt, author of The Wednesday Wars and Okay For Now), and they fed us before and after! Basically, they told us, "Okay, you've studied all you need to study and you've passed all the tests you need to pass. Go out and teach and show your students the face of God."

Then Graduation Day arrived. We all piled into the car to make what was my 4th trip to Calvin in 5 days. The family found their seats and I found my place in the old gym with all the other grads. We spent about 45 minutes just taking pictures and looking at everybody's hats. I gotta say, the Education graduates had some of the best hats:

The music grads had a phrase from Pomp and Circumstance on their hats...
The math grads had π = 3.141 on their hats...
And the world language grads had flags or mottos from various countries on their hats!
(from left: Mexico, Spain, Spain+Education+Psychology, Germany, "Pura Vida" from Costa Rica, Peru, and Honduras)
I was pretty amazed that the ceremony lasted only an hour and a half. They got through 850 names so fast! We were done and outta there for a nice little party on Commons lawn. And lots of pictures, of course.
There were soooo many of us. My row is filing out right now.

Here I am receiving my diploma holder from...someone. I don't remember his name.

The four of us graduated from Calvin Christian High School together 4 years ago, and here we are as college graduates. 3 of us went to Calvin, and 1 went to Trinity in Chicago.

Some fabulous women of Calvin College.












So now what? Well, I'll be at the Grounds for the summer months, then finishing my undergrad at Calvin in the fall, then I plan to work full-time to earn some money for grad school. And maybe somewhere in there I'll get used to thinking of myself as a college graduate. :)

Summer of 10,000 Pages update:
Total pages so far: 682
Books completed: 1
Books in progress: 3
Most recent title completed: Harry Potter y la Camara de Secretos by J.K. Rowling (2nd HP book in Spanish)
"Mount Everest" title for the summer: Les Miserables, Victor Hugo, 1488 pages. So far (8% done), it's pretty good.