Is That a Light at the End of the Tunnel?

….or just the train coming at me?

Good news: I filed my application for graduation last week! The form confirmed that the school will send my diploma to our current address, where it will likely take its rightful place in the attic next to the box where my undergrad diploma currently resides, and that it will bear the name I had when I started school all those years ago, which isn’t the name I have now.

Ah well. I think that’s fitting. It matches my dysfunctional trip through grad school nicely.

Plus to change it, I’d have to go all the way to the main campus during business hours. I’ve never been to the main campus, and I can’t see breaking that streak now.

I also won’t be breaking the streak to walk in the graduation ceremony. One, it would cost $80 to rent the cap and gown. Two, it’s on my birthday. I’m pretty sure that I can find something better to do on my birthday in a much more celebratory way than to sit with a bunch of people I’ve barely gotten to know. (Entirely my fault, I know. But I don’t get to see the friends I have, already. I couldn’t see committing to a whole new group.)

Wow, that makes me sound really curmudgeonly. Oh well. This is what happens when you get old while going to grad school.

I only have something like 20 classes left before that ceremony that I won’t be attending. (B is keeping track for me.) All that lies between now and then, besides class: something like 1500 pages of reading, two 20-page papers, two exams, two group presentations.

I did manage to check off one assignment that has been out there since January 2007 (you may have read about my tendency to procrastinate): the essay about my policy-related experience so they don’t make me do an internship to graduate. They require an internship if you don’t have two years of policy work; I’m hoping that 11 years of policy writing and research, plus three years of internships before that, will qualify me for the waiver.

With that, I suppose I should turn my attention back to my class that’s currently underway. 😉

May 9, May 9, May 9….