I graduated last week; and that night I got drunk and stayed up until the early hours writing a nice blog post, which I subsequently lost in a drunken state of delirium.
The day of graduation was very pleasant. Although sitting down with my housemates once everything had settled was probably the nicest thing. I had awoken very early that morning in order to iron my clothes and take my shoes to be re-heeled by a nice cobbler. Everyone's parents arrived and there was a lot of photo taking and queuing. I ruined most of the photographs because I was suffering from a cold and so had a red nose and blurry eyes in 94% of the shots.
That night me and my friends did not attend the spectacle of the grad ball, opting instead to drink beer and smoke cigarettes with the only company any of us cared for. The feeling of the eve was that of celebration, however it was tinged with the sadness of leaving and the inevitable future struggle of the unknown.
The way I think about my future can be summed up like this:
"to live life in a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph."
(taken from a book I'm reading, which I relate to all too well, called 'One Day' by David Nicholls.)I spoke to a handful of people who were content with their proposed image of the near future; a marital-like home with their long-term boyfriends, an OK 9-5 and a nice sit down in the evenings. A middle of the road existance is fine for the people who lack the energy to strive or creative intellegence to escape.
What I appriciated more was the honesty of my fellow graduates who admitted they didn't know what they wanted, all they knew is that they wanted to escape and refused to settle. I like that, aspirations for a totally 'cool' and exciting existence throughout their 20s if nothing else.
