Due to travel and being home in Minnesota all last week, this post is coming late today.
This past weekend, my girlfriend graduated from college. It was an exciting time, and she officially finished up this chapter of her life and began to look forward to the PhD program she begins in the fall. Going to commencement was exciting, having this official moment to mark the occasion. This is what I appreciate about commencement, is its role as the milestone.
I don’t think I fully appreciated my commencement in the moment. Being in a major where I didn’t know many people, it was even a little isolating to not share the entire time with my friends. Yet it is still an event I can look back at to finalize the accomplishments I had in college. It’s also the last time something like that occurs. It felt to be one of the biggest jumps into adulthood, as there were no more obvious goals set out for me, beyond survival as an adult.
I think it’s good to have times where we can celebrate ourselves, to take the moment necessary to truly reflect on what we’ve done and where we are going after the fact. I hope to be cognizant of that feeling moving forward. Although there will be no institutions to celebrate my personal accomplishments, I want to take the time to reflect regularly, acknowledge what I’ve done, then focus on moving forward.