rights, privileges, and responsibilities.

graduation was fun.  and boring. mainly boring.  and i don't feel any different, really, but there were some pretty cool highlights.

one of them was when we all stood up and had our degrees conferred upon us.  the board of trustees guy said that we now had all of the rights, privileges, and responsibilities associated with the doctor of philosophy degree. funny. until then, i hadn't really thought of a degree as having any responsibilities whatsoever, but it does, i suppose.

when we all stood up and did that, i might have gotten a rush of "wow. i did it."

but then i had to wait to get hooded for one hundred and fifty years, and that was boring.

and when i got hooded, it was so fast and i was so worried about hitting my mark that i barely heard it when they announced "DOCTOR teachergirl maidenname marriedlastname" but that was pretty cool.

but the part that got me the most fired up (other than desperately wanting the dang thing to be over already--it's much more boring when you are the one sitting on the floor than when you're up in the audience with other people...) was at the end.  we were asked to stand and sing the alma mater.

well, i go to football games, and we sing that there, and i know it, and i feel a lot of pride for collegetown U.  so i sang.

no one around me sang.  the whole stuffy phd section didn't sing at all, and they all looked back at me when i got loud at the part about our school being glorious (that's when we get really loud at football games) and i just started to get mad.

don't you dare look down at me, stuffy doctorate guy. i have spirit. i have a life outside of my dissertation. i, surprisingly, don't always have my nose in a book.  don't you dare look down at me for having spirit and for showing it.  i decorated my hat. i sang the alma mater.  i did both with pizazz.

don't you dare judge me for being cooler than you. 

academics really bug me sometimes.  they really, really do.  not everything is quite as serious as you think it is, buddy, just so you know.  it's really not.

anyway. 

it was fun, and now i'm a doctor, and i don't feel one little bit different about that. 

that's weird.  maybe it'll begin to sink in when i see my diploma, or when i write "dr. teachergirl" on the eight syllabi that i have to prepare next week. 

until then, though, it's just...sort of odd. 

but i'll be a collegetown u mascot for life.  and i'm proud of that.  and of my accomplishments, of course. i made it. i finished, and right when i wanted to.  i sucked it up, i dug deep, i figured it out, and i finished with honor.

not much more you can ask of life than that, you know?