You can't go home...

I graduated from college last Saturday. I never thought I'd see the day, but the day finally saw me. I wasn't ready, I didn't feel like I'd gotten everything done, and in truth I still haven't. I still need to submit a final draft of my PHIL 490 Independent Study paper on the concept of tragedy in Miguel de Unamuno's work The Tragic Sense of Life and sit my CLEP exam. Despite all this, they conferred my degree on me.

The ceremony was nicely done, and while I didn't really think I was going to cry, I did. I didn't weep, but I distinctly cried. Particularly when my friend Lisa's parents accepted her degree for her. (Lisa was killed in a car accident coming home from the bar this past fall, and it shocked all of campus.) Her parents are wonderful, and I spoke at her candlelight vigil on campus. It was just so heart-wrenching, and Bill Crawford, the admin who was announcing the names of the graduates, read a short statement about Lisa written by Dr. Swedene, which only added to the crying. And bagpipes always choke me up, I'm not sure why. When the faculty spontaneously and unifromly rose to their feet to applaud the graduating class, it finally hit me-- this wave of pride and gratefulness I hadn't counted on feeling.

After graduation and snapping a few pictures, the family and I packed up my apartment and loaded up the minivan. If I hadn't been taking the siblings home in my car, I would have been able to fit everything. As it was, I had to leave a fair number of things in the Honors House storage shed. I'll pick it up on the way back from the wedding I'm driving to over Memorial Day weekend up in Timmins. I might also head up there for the CLEP testing date in July, and then I would definitely be able to pick it all up.

So... now I'm back working at the same job I've had for the past SIX YEARS. It's a good job, it pays well considering how much I could expect to make in a summer, but when you break down the number of hours, I'm making something like $2.50 an hour. And it's office work, nothing backbreaking or too difficult. I like my boss, she's wonderful, but the job is high-stress all the time, and if I screw up, EVERYBODY knows it. However, she's really good about letting me take time off during May for weddings and other commitments.

Regardless, I'm back at my desk and answering phones and trying to find housing for the world's largest Shakespeare company. Already the whole damn season feels off-kilter somehow. This may be the year to go out on, but I don't know because I still haven't heard from Grad Schools about them wanting me to come study with them.

I won't lie-- I've got my heart set on the University of St. Andrews. I know that it will cost me an ungodly amount, that the exchange rate will bend me over the desk, that I'm going into a narrow field, but I DO NOT CARE. They have a one-year Shakespeare Studies masters program that takes 50 weeks and I'll walk away with my MLitt. They were just accepted into the Folger Institute, they're in SCOTLAND, and I want to go! I check my e-mail compulsively, hoping to find a letter from their PG department telling me that they want me. Please, dear God, let them want me.

Until then, I get to live in my parents basement, listing books for sale on amazon.com to help ease my living expenses, watching bad cable television until I fall asleep at 11 pm. It's a life.