Hello all! Its been such a long time! Since January, in fact. Too long. But I have good news (well, I think it’s good news). I’m done. What do I mean done? Well, take a look at this fabulous hat. 
Pretty fabulous, no? I didn’t take it off for the rest of the day, although that was, in large part, due to the wonderful things it did to my hair.
My family braved the 12 hour trip to come see me (and they brought cookies!), not to mention braving the long sit at the Georgia Dome, plus the awfulness that was trying to get out of the Georgia Dome. (P.S. Georgia State, the long underground maze thing was confusing and unnecessary and made us all feel a bit like cattle). The ceremony was decent despite the huge wait and the awfulness once it ended. Our speaker wasn’t fantastic but she didn’t drone on for an hour and a half about nothing like when my dad graduated back in high school, so that was lovely. Stopping points are nice.
The downside to graduating everyone in the school at the exact same time (as somewhat expected, and no, they don’t call your name anymore) was that there were a million of us on that field and it was hard to find your family in the crowd/they couldn’t find you. Greg sent me a text right after they first herded us in that reads, “throwing your hands up like you just don’t care wont help us find you.” What insight. Thanks Greg.
Also, Georgia State, this would have been cool if…
…we had been forewarned, like the audience had, that there was going to be an explosion. Most of it had fallen once we all managed to figure out that no one had actually tried to blow up the building, its was just confetti, and no, we didn’t need to hide under our chairs. Not that anyone did hide under their chair. But I asked everyone around me and I wasn’t the only one who freaked out and thought that the building absolutely MUST be on fire.
So…after the confetti, and trudging through the field trying not to trip on confetti, and the lovely wandering in underground circles bit, we all emerged into the cloudy, grey day and tried very very hard to find our families. And then after we finally found our families (trust me, this was a challenge) we went and sat in our cars. And we sat and we sat and we sat. What better way to end a lovely graduation than with a traffic jam? Eventually we did make it home for dinner(home as in the Macaroni Grill near home):
And then, we traveled back in time to the Thursday previous and witnessed the ceremony where GSU actually called my name.
I was, of course, the awkward one on the stage. The first thing I did was drop the paper that I was supposed to hand over to Dr. Dobranski. I was the only one who dropped anything. Out of 3 departments worth of students. I’m probably the only one who noticed that, but dropping things in front of large groups of people can make you seriously self conscious. 🙂
I want to thank all my family, friends, and professors and anyone else who helped me out on my supremely long journey. It feels good to finally be done. Thank you Grandma Alice, Grandma Bessie, Aunt Polly, Aunt Vera, and (technically) Greg for driving all that way to see me. Thanks Mom and Dad, for, you know, being wonderful, supportive, loving…just the best parents ever. True story. And congrats to all the other graduates out there, all the high schoolers (Rachel!), and my preschoolers and kindergartners(whom I hear did a fabulous job preforming at their graduation ceremoies!)!!!!!!!!!!! Moments like that deserve a few extra exclamations!
