Some Musings About Graduation

As I tell people often, my internship is the last thing I need to complete for my degree. It has been a long time coming. Without wanting to date myself too much, I started college quite a while ago. It was before most people carried cell phones, before Facebook, before the war in Iraq. I took a couple of extended hiatuses in there for various reasons, but I finally got myself together for one final push, and I'm in the home stretch.

It's a good feeling, because at this point it feels like graduating from college is the part of my life that I have left undone until now. When I took those breaks, the rest of my life moved on regardless. I got married, moved away, had a kid, bought a house in the suburbs, etc. When college is over, most people feel like celebrating, but sometimes I think it will be something of an anticlimax (for lack of a better word) in my case. I will have finally finished the unfinished business of my schooling. It will be, I hope, a feeling of finally having balance in the academic side of my life. A long, deep sigh of relief... not an atmosphere so much of celebration, but of quiet optimism and confidence.

The thing I look forward to the most is what it will mean for me professionally. I have worked some fairly tedious, low-paying, dead-end jobs over the last decade, and I've gotten to know that world a little too well. Whether I end up working in government or not, I anticipate being empowered to do something that does more than just pay the bills. What that will be, of course, remains to be seen.