The Graduation Wait

With only five days left, the tension is beginning to mount. Our prom dresses and shoes are eagerly awaiting us in our closets, our graduation dresses and suits hung, calling to us. My graduation dress is hanging on the door of my closet, beckoning. It asks me the most important question, "Meredith, why are you graduating a week or more after everyone else in America?" It is the question on all of our minds. The facebook.com deluge of graduation and prom pictures has begun, while we stagnate at my school.

We are chomping at the bit, chanting, "We gotta get out of this place, if it's the last thing we eeeeeeever dooooo" and asking each other how many days are left, even though we already know the answer. There is a strange kind of feeling in the air when people near graduation. We are like wild animals with cuter clothing and increasing piles of emo mix CDs about how growing up sucks and we will miss you, emo scream, why is existence like this. n.b. If I receive one of these CDs with emo on them, I will burn them, and not in the illegal way, but in the let's cook some marshmellows way.

I've begun packing my things away, selling the things I don't need. It was especially difficult to part with my stereo, which has wreaked havoc in the dorm for four years, bring pleading underclassmen in asking if I could just maybe turn down "Smack My Bitch Up." But then I sold it and treated myself to an expensive dinner (in utter despair, of course...).

I am increasingly aware that I am not conforming to the Graduation Emotion Standard, which I will, for purposes of quick typing, call the GES. Things that should make me sentimental and nostalgic sometimes do, but then almost immediately, I get over it. People try to express their deepseated emotional moments and sage thoughts to me, but all I can think is, "Hell yes, I'm going to the beach." My only hope is that all this pent up energy doesn't culminate in my being a sobbing wreck at graduation.

DRIVEBY TANGENT! I try to only let myself cry when other people can't see me. For example, at movies when I know there's going to be a sad part (I almost always cry during the sad part in movies, and I don't know why), I establish that I have a sniffle early on. That way when I'm emotionally devastated about Rose letting Jack slip into the frigid Atlantic Ocean and I'm establishing a Nile-proportioned river on the theater, people will just think I'm sniffling. It works. Try it, especially boys, because I know you're not supposed to cry during movies because you're a man.

In conclusion, is it graduation yet?