All The Right Moves

During my final meeting with my thesis adviser, we got into a discussion of the numerous ceremonies in my near future, from one for the department to one for the entire University. She looked at me and smiled. You know, we don't have anything like this in France. It's such a nice tradition in the States. I never see students as happy as they are at their graduation ceremonies. Everyone wants me to take pictures with them...and with their parents too! It's just such a happy day. I had never thought of it that way. Between furiously taking notes and panicking about an upcoming exam, there are few times we students have just sat back and smiled at our lecturing professors. At this "work-hard, play-hard" institution, professors saw the "work," and fellow classmates saw the "play." Professors must not see students smile very often.

Besides the cap and gown, my high school and college graduation ceremonies were completely different. We had three rehearsals for my high school ceremony. Play by play rehearsals to the point where we would drive 30 minutes to the mountain winery, practice processing, sit through the entire roll call, practice walking up to get a practice diploma, pause for the practice photographer to take our practice photograph, practice walking off the stage back to our seats, and finally, practice recessing. The rehearsals seemed to go on for an eternity. Practice makes perfect, right? But by the time the actual ceremony rolled around, there was a twinge of mundaneness.. I had already shook the Head of School's hand. The day before. At the practice ceremony. The actual ceremony just flew by.

A couple days before our department ceremony, a friend and I were celebrating our imminent graduations. At one point, she looked at me, puzzled. Are we supposed to wear caps and gowns to this or is it more of a reception? She asked. I stared back blankly. I had no clue (We found the answer in the fine print of one of many emails we had received...crisis averted!). Upon entering the auditorium, we ran to the bathroom to put on our caps and gowns (the easy part) and the hood. If the hood was a language, it would be Greek. We stood there observing the way in which each student was sporting his or her hood in an effort to decide what was correct (that's what psychologists do). How do people know how to do this?! We complained. We threw something together, and went to be seated. Do we have to sit in some sort of order? My thoughts were interrupted by an official who handed me an index card to write out my name phonetically for the announcer. Do I also write it orthographically?

The words of the keynote speaker were drowned out by the sound of my heavily beating heart. Why are you nervous? I scolded myself. I'm going to have to state the title of my thesis. Do I remember it? Speech by ears and eyes...Yes okay I do. I have to say thank-yous. I want to thank my adviser and my parents. Are other people thanking their parents? I have to go up, shake her hand, and walk across the stage. What if I trip? For a person who has been walking and talking since long before she can remember, I was pretty diffident about the tasks at hand.

I didn't stutter or trip. But my hood was wrong. That was fixed at my College Graduation by a Graduation "Marshall" the next day. And by Monday's Commencement ceremony, I was helping others (as I wrote on my family listserv earlier this month, by May 17, we're going to be ceremonied out!). My College graduation and Commencement were filled with several questions and surprises as well. Do we move our tassels from right to left now? ...Now?.... NOW?! Nothing was obvious, but nothing was impossible. I figured it out as the ceremony went on. It was kind of fun that way and the ceremony seemed longer and arguably more fulfilling than my high school ceremony (above and beyond the disparity in the actual accomplishment each was acknowledging. I mean, my high school graduation ceremony involved the releasing of doves).

Back home, I was regaling a close family friend on the weekend's events. I didn't even know when to move my tassel! I joked. She became kind of serious. Come on! You've been having graduation ceremonies since kindergarten! How much more practice do you need? She was right. When I start work in the fall, I'm going to be diving right in to the deep end. Gone are the days where the final exam poses problems that are just slightly tweaked from the practice problems on the homework. Gone are the days of practice handshakes and trial runs (except for those of you going into research...) But my life experiences thus far are my "practice runs." And I'll have many more, but they'll all be life experiences in themselves (I'm blatantly overlooking wedding rehearsals, but weddings are like fairy tales and I'm talking about real life). The "practice" category is going to be sparse to nonexistent.

Howard Ogden once said, "Cab drivers are living proof that practice does not make perfect." Go. Live life. Forget about whether or not you've done it before. Just give it your best shot, and who knows, you might surprise yourself.