Graduation

So I graduated from Grad school. Yippee. It was both hard and not so hard at the same time, if that makes any kind of sense.

The school I went to was good, I had a good time, and for the most part, my professors were pretty decent, save for one who shall remain nameless.

When I was in high school, going to a SUNY (State University of New York) school was sort of looked down upon. If you were going to SUNY New Paltz, it was only because you couldn’t go anywhere else. You might have been going to a local SUNY school, but at least you weren’t a loser who was going to Orange County Community College... (which is actually where I went.)

Since a million years ago, when I graduated, things have changed. Used to be SUNY New Paltz would accept damn near anyone. Not anymore. In fact, a cousin of mine who I think is terribly smart, was NOT ACCEPTED to New Paltz. It’s just that selective now.
When I joined the Fellow’s program and moved back from Maine to New York, incoming Fellows were informed that we had two possible options for Grad school. Lehman College or Fordham. Of course I kept my fingers crossed for Fordham. Growing up in the Bronx, Fordham University might as well have been Harvard.

Of course I got Lehman, which is not even part of the SUNY system, its part of the CUNY system, which is the CITY University of New York. No big deal, if I wasn’t in the program, I wouldn’t be going to Grad school at all, so I didn’t mind going to Lehman.

But this was par for my course, all three colleges I went to, Orange County Community College (OCCC,) University of Southern Maine (USM) and Lehman College were all basically “we’ll take anybody” schools. I have nothing bad to say about any of these schools, but let’s be honest, Lehman College is not Fordham University.

Nowhere was this more obvious than at graduation.

A few years ago I went to the graduation at The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. The speakers talked about hope and success and all that they are going to accomplish in the future.

As you can imagine, the Lehman College graduation was QUITE different.

Lehman’s graduation was filled with accomplishments the graduates have already DONE - namely graduating college. These graduates had to claw and scrape and fight to graduate from college. A stark contrast to the themes at Holy Cross.

And I’m happier being with the Lehman grads. It was a struggle, and we were celebrating out there on the field, probably louder than our Holy Cross counterparts. But can you blame us?