Graduation

This weekend I was reminded of a story that happened a year ago at my Graduate School graduation. It's very worthy of a blog. I have to preface this by saying that I know it seems like I get into a lot of crazy situations, but I think it's just the fact that I tell on myself when others remain their dignity and don't fess up. I mean, granted, I admit I have a way of getting myself into situations more than the average person, but I also think few people admit what I admit about myself. I figure if I am gonna be accident prone or a magnet for acting a fool, I might as well use it for the benefit of others humor. It's one of my many Spiritual gifts, as my friend Josh Henderson would say.

I went to University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. So our graduation was with the medschool, pharmacy school, nurses, and all kinds of smart people. Not that Speech Pathology is any walk in the park, but I am just trying to set the scene that this is a pretty dignified graduation (albeit in the Barton Collesum in the ghetto of Little Rock). Most of the graduates, my program included, have been through rigarous and trying classes and schedules to get to this point. Grad school was the hardest thing I have ever been through. It's tough. And the last year was killer. I had to manage a graduate research project (one step down from a thesis), an assistanship, clinicals, grand rounds and other outside of class work, and classes sun up to sun down. So I would leave the house to exercise at 5 am and get home late at night from clinicals and classes.

All this to say, if I could handle juggling that monster schedule and getting through with all my requirements in place, you think I could handle the actual graduation ceremony. Apparently, my mind had just given up at this point. By the time we got to graduation, my classmates and I were so drained it was pathetic. Well, I commuted from Searcy to Little Rock all during grad school, and the grad ceremony was in L.R., which is an hour away from my house. So I leave for the graduation and I am just barely on time. I get to the place and I realize, "I don't have my tassel." Now this might not seem like a big deal, but remember what I said early. This is a pretty dignified graduation. Every department has their "Graduation gear" (can't remember the proper term for that) and colored tassel. Ours are bright gold. So it's gonna be pretty obvious when I am the only one out of 18 in my program without bright gold hanging down from my head. So I RUN around the colliseum, in heels with bad knees, for at least 20 minutes, and luckily, the Dean of Grad School has anticipated losers such as me and has a tassel to spare. By the time I get my tassel in place, my hood was screwing up and my classmates had to mess with that for like 20 minutes. So them telling me to get there an hour early was for a reason. I looked at my watch and I have 5 minutes to spare.

Now, grad school taught me one thing above all else: time management. 5 minutes is equivelancy to 60 minutes in the real world. It's vital (esp 5 minutes of sleep). So I sprint to the bathroom. As I am washing my hands, I hear faint music in the background and think, "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!" I walk out of the bathroom to where my class was, and guess what. My class is gone into the ceremony. And they were the first ones to walk in. All I see is a never ending row of drab green (pharamacy). I didn't know what to do. It was one of those split second decisions. If I don't go now, I will never go. So I plunge in between to pharmacy graduates, them in their drab green and me in my bright gold tassel and hood, and we walk into the collesum for the Medical School graduation. The people I was walking between thought I was crazy. It was like the song from Sesame Street, "Which one of these doesn't go with the other?" in the worse way imaginable. Well, pharamacy cuts off about 8-10 rows back. My class is up at the front. So I have to keep walking. I put my brave face on, and just walk up to the front of the gym by myself and slid into the row next to my friend Joanie. Apparently my whole class was trying to figure out where I went. And then they thought it was hillarious and only appropriate that I was in the bathroom, because just the week before I had been given the reward, "Most likely to leave the class room 80 within an hour to go to the bathroom." (Which, by the way, when I was rewarded that, my teachers laughed a little TOO heartidly). I was always late for class because I had to go to the bathroom, so it was only natural for me to be late for graduation because of the bathroom. My family was up within eye's shot, trying to figure out what happened and then breaking into laughter after they figured out that all that had happened was that I had, "Pulled a Caroline." What a good representation of the bright students my program graduates.