The Graduate - For Real This Time

As of a few hours ago, I am officially no longer a student. I just attended my last class, handed in my last paper, and delivered my last presentation. For as long as I can remember, I have been a student with no more than a summer as a break. School perpetually dangled in front of me, though not in an overbearing sense. I like being a student; I've enjoyed my 20+ years of learning. There's still so much I have to learn, how can this period be over? Frankly, the more I advanced, the more interesting it became - I'm not ready to quit. I don't like the prospect of not being a student. Being a teacher seems to imply I know it all, while "student/teacher" connotes a sort of give-and-take that is ideal. I do, however, intend to use my student ID for discounts for as long as I can reasonable claim to look like I do in the photo. Additionally, as an alumnus, I'm still permitted to audit classes at my old college for free. Considering my proximity to the school, I'm sure I'll take advantage of that opportunity in order to get my student-fix.

That said, I am glad to be done with this current graduate school program. It's been ridiculously grueling, even pointlessly so at times. Plus, I'm not sure I care enough about learning pedagogues and the like, it just doesn't interest me. I've had my fill of learning about the inequalities in public education and not being given practical solutions on how to remedy them. I get it, your statistics and my firsthand experience have sufficiently angered me. But now what do we do about it? I suppose if there were easy answers, these inequities would be addressed by now, but I wish there was more time spent at least trying to determine how to either topple or repair the system from within.

If I could learn about some other discipline, however, I'd be all for that. I'd start tomorrow even.

On Wednesday, the graduating teachers had our officially unofficial ceremony/celebration. At 9:30 in the morning during the second-to-last class of my foreseeable formal education, we did shots of whiskey during peers presentations. By the time the ceremony rolled around, we developed a drinking game to play, anticipating the numerous cliches sure to come up during the proceedings. Our sip-on-it words included honor, social justice, equity, excellence, integrity, change the world, and inspirational. As it turned out, that was more than enough to do us in.

Kat and Christine came to support us, and I love them for doing so in what I'm sure was a boring ceremony aside from the barely concealed alcohol. I did my best to disguise my increasing intoxication, but continually, uncontrollably, and perhaps rudely belched loudly, something I almost never do. When I won the award for thesis writing, I ran down the aisle, slapping strangers five and made a spectacle of myself. 'tever, I clearly didn't care. I thought I was doing okay until I accidentally interrupted someone being recognized for excellent work. A graduate was labeled an "overachiever" by eir advisor, so I appropriately, or so I thought, booed at the word "overachiever." You know, because it would be funny for teachers to dislike one another for performing well. Except that it wasn't taken as such. I saw Kat slap a hand on eir face and slump into eir seat out of embarrassment, because my "joke" did not translate and everyone sitting nearby found me rude. Realizing I made a mistake, I loudly exclaimed, "Just kidding, I like her," but I think the damage was already done.

When I lined up with some classmates to receive our individual recognition, I confided that I was "very drunk." Apparently, this was an unnecessary comment; as one person said, "I can tell. I can smell it." They could see it, as well, probably, as just prior to standing up, I spilled on myself, and had to go on stage with wet pants. Again, I didn't care. After being recognized, on a dare from Christine, I patted my advisor's butt while hugging eir. Still. Didn't. Care. At the reception, I was greeted by a university employee who told me that ey appreciated my "enthusiasm" while receiving my award earlier. I wanted to say, "Yeah, it comes in a bottle now," but that seemed too blatant. Shortly thereafter, I won what they called a "big raffle." They lied: it was a jar of mints. What should have turned into a long, party-hard kind of night wound down quickly. I was sober by 8, and didn't really want to go through the whole cycle of drunkenness again, instead opting for bed.

Oh, and yeah, I have my Masters degree now. Woooooo or something. It just occurred to me that I haven't mentioned that yet. It probably would have been appropriate to start with that rather than bemoaning the conclusion of my student status, but I suppose the order of reference is telling in itself. Upon walking out of my last class, I celebrated the occasion by going directly to the college liberry. I'm adamant about taking advantage of this awesome resource for the remaining month before my access expires. I finally have time to free read, so I got a scholarly book on Six Feet Under, a collection of essays by Monique Wittig, and a book of suggestions for teachers on incorporating themes of social justice into student writing. That's right, just minutes after finishing a year and some months of reading about teaching, I'm determined to read some helpful books about teaching. I also put about four other books with similar themes on hold, since I plan to spend the remainder of my summer finding ways of actually adding progressive issues into my lesson plans. Like Mark Twain says, "I never let my schooling interfere with my education."