May 27, 2011

Graduation and Such



Victory is mine! Victory is mine... Bring me all the finest muffins and bagels in the land? (Name that show?)

I am now all graduated.

People keep asking me how it feels and I tell them, "Like a long weekend." Remember how I was afraid of crying in the middle of graduation? Didn't happen. I think it's because it didn't hit that I was, you know, graduating. It still hasn't. Or maybe it has and I'm just handling it much better than I though I would. Maybe I really wasn't very attached to high school after all. (attached does not have a "t" in it. just so you know.)

The other question people keep asking is what I've been doing since I graduated. I wish I had a more impressive answer. I mostly say "sleeping," or "eating," or "watching a lot of foreign movies and documentaries and Korean dramas."

We have really got to talk about kdramas one of these days. But, once again, not today.

I've also been cleaning a lot. I'm leaving paradise for a desert in less than a week now. (you know, i always remember the difference between desert's spelling and dessert's because you always want one more dessert (thus the extra "s") but no one wants more desert. except my mom. who thinks they're pretty... we're related, really.) So I've been sorting through my clothes and books and cleaning out kitchen cupboards so that I won't be freaking out next Wednesday any more than is necessary.  I still need to clean out the closets and buy some lotion so I don't shrivel up, die, and become mummified in the lack of moisture.

I like wet air. And green vegetation. And rain. These are things I am expecting miss.

I should probably tell you that graduation went nicely. Graduation practices were actually better than bearable. I played angry birds for the first time (so addicting, stupid pigs) and got to hang out with my friends. Graduation itself went fairly smoothly. I don't remember stuttering in my speech more than once  (if I did, don't feel obligated to disillusion me). I had two favorite parts. One was right before the ceremony when one of my classmates told me I was just like Emma Thompson.

This was the other one:


After the ceremony, when we were supposed to walk calmly off the left of the stage the boys lept up from the bleachers and started doing the haka. I'm sure this wasn't completely spontaneous. My bet is that during the eternity that they spent passing out diplomas someone employed the trusted and true "pass it on" tactic. But I hadn't heard about it. And it was way awesome.

I'm going to go sleep now. Or eat. Or watch a foreign film, documentary, or kdrama.

Over.

May 17, 2011

What I Don't Understand

There are many things in this world I don't understand. Like calculus. And the internet. And how you estimate how many stars are in the universe. (are all of these things connected somehow? if i learn calculus will i be able to estimate the number of stars in the universe?) And also why, on earth, my school has fourteen hours of graduation practice.

Fourteen hours? What could we possibly do for that long?

That's what I was thinking when I walked into the gym today (after paying seventy-eight dollars of dues, including three dollars from a ID i swear I never had). And then we learned the songs (and motions) to Lean on Me, You Are My Fire (my childhood in note form), It's Hard To Believe (ahh, High School Musical), and two others songs I'd never heard of.

That was six hours of practice. My legs hurt and my respect for Michael Jackson has gone up, because I do not understand how people do that with their body. We have four more hours of practice tomorrow and I'm wondering, what's left? I'm told we have to practice walking and moving our tassels, which is, after all, very complicated.

I guess. Maybe?

But it can't possibly be four hours worth of complicated. Right?

Over.

May 8, 2011

Graduation BeMoanings

FUN FACT: This is my last week of high school and my last week of seminary.

This fun fact? Has not clicked at all. I have no real feelings about it. I don't really believe in it. I've told myself that it was coming for so long that, now that it's here and fun facts like the above are bouncing in my ear until my skull rings, I find myself brushing them off and saying Uh huh. Yeah. I'm sure.

I wonder when reality will hit. When I'll suddenly realize that this is where the sidewalk ends and high school is moments a way from become the good old days and I am going to have to wash my own socks from now on and ever after.

I hope it doesn't happen in the middle of one of my graduation speeches. (yes, plural. not only was i unsuccessful in passing my high school graduation speech off to Vita, i am now talking in seminary graduation too... Brother Oleole told me i'm representing all the girls in our graduating class, but no pressure or anything.)

I'm the crying sort. Have I mentioned that? I cry. A lot. Often and hard. None of this single streak stuff for me; that's for amateurs. I do full-on, red-faced, mouth-creasing, eyes-burning, lungs-searing sob fests. (When we watched Titanic in school I was the first girl to break down. Ila was next to me and it started this chain reaction until our entire row was crying into kleenexs we made Taylor fetch for us.)

Books, movies, long days and particularly cuddly looking bear cubs send me over the edge. Coming to the Great and Grave Realization in one of my graduation speeches is thus potential humiliating. And it's totally the kind of thing that would happen to me.

I can just see myself, the poster-girl for one of those high school cliches I've been avoiding for the past four years, standing up and talking to all my school-mates, their friends, families, and dogs and sobbing, "I'm going to miss you all so, so (sob) much."

No. No no no. I refuse.

What I am tempted to do is quote Bilbo Baggins: "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

It's perfect! Half of the people up there I haven't talked to since sixth grade and most of them think my name is Melissa. (you know my name, right?... right?)

Anyway, I might be spared the humiliation of sobbing in front of everyone, or the awkward displeasure of my school councilor when I half-insult everyone I'm graduating with, because last time I checked my cap and gown were yet to materialize. I just might not walk at all. Which would be OK by me, but I'm pretty sure my mom, school councilor, and various English teachers wouldn't be happy.

You know they're making us all wear white shoes for graduation? How lame is that? I don't even own white shoes. Do you think that they'd give my graduation speech away if I showed up in yellow wedges? Because that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Over.