Mundane Turbulence

Wow. So…I’ve got a bachelor’s degree.

This event has been a long time coming – ten years, to approximate – and its arrival has been difficult to accept as fact. Sometimes you find yourself doing something for so long that it really feels like there’ll be no end to it.  In 1999, I started school at the Massachusetts College of Art (which, for some reason, has had “and Design” recently tacked onto the end of its moniker), and it was a three-year disaster. I had no business seeking higher education immediately after high school: I had talent, but no drive; I had ideas, but no plans; I was bright, but without discipline. There was no way I could succeed there, because I had no vision of what success was for me. All I had was a vague notion that the art school model might somehow be different from that of my previous academic career. Which…was way, way off. Mostly I just spent my time wishing I wasn’t living at home.

Christian living back home: terminally annoyed. (Although at least late night Chinese was available in walking distance.)

But leaving college didn’t exactly bring further guidance to my life. I pretty much just dicked around for a few years: living in an apartment (and learning by process of elimination how to live with others); working a job at a video store (which was relatively easy); getting dumped (and dating and getting dumped some more and dating some more); making art (in a far more productive fashion than while at school); ya’know, doing those things that aimless 20-somethings do, I assume – and it wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t too good either.

My mother, in her wisdom, suggested that I get my life moving in some direction by seeking employment at Harvard University, so that I could take classes and finish up that ol’ degree. This seemed like a very prudent proposal to me, so I just sorta…made it happen, I guess. I hooked a bit and I crooked a bit, and I wound up with a pretty rockin’ job, taking classes for extremely rockin’ fees. Long story short, between then (2005) and now, it seems that I’ve done what I set out to do: degree, direction, et cetera – and that certainly feels good.

Commencement, which was on June 4, was an emotional experience. I spent much of the morning avoiding conversation with others…I had this sense that any utterance regarding my journey of those four prior years would cause me to bawl uncontrolably. I didn’t want people to know how important it was to me – this thing that so many others do as a simple matter of course – it felt like something of a weakness to attach such sentimentality to such a mundane undertaking. But there it was: this meant a hell of a lot.

Here’s the shield of the Harvard Extension School, my alma mater:

Some of my friends are probably sick of hearing gush, but this shield is meaningful to me. The two bushels of wheat were the fee for classes at the Lowell Institute – the precursor to the Extension School (which, by the way, was founded 100 years ago), and the burning lamp signifies learning by night. This is a very honest representation of what it is to attend the school, and although the shield simple, it symbolizes both the school’s utilitarian foundation, and the struggle with (and often against) time that its students face. And that I faced. Processing with my fellow graduates to Harvard Yard on Commencement morning, I carried an inflatable lamp and a couple sprigs of wheat, which had been handed to me by Extension School staff. As we passed by the processions of other schools, their students would ask me what the items meant, and when I stopped to explain it to some of them, I felt my throat close, and I choked on my words. I claimed those mementos personally, and in that moment, explaining their story was like explaining my own. That cheesy inflatable lamp was the reliquary for my memories, and that wheat had sustained the life that made those memories. These things deserved silent reverence.

I was able to move past my sensitive perception of the items eventually, though. One of the highlights of the morning was when one of my dearest friends, Anna (who was graduating from the Divinity School with a Master of Theological Studies), found me and we snapped a photo together. She asked about the wheat and lamp, and I was able to get through the explanation without making a mess. I later lost both items in the chaos of the day, but I was given an Extension School lapel pin, and I will likely cherish it always. I love that power can reside in vessels of diminutive sizes.

In any case, the weather was beautiful, and pensive nostalgia was not the order of the day. I embraced family members, conversed with friendly strangers, and finally accepted the diploma that I had earned: the most quantifiable measure of my journey.

And they even got my name right.