Graduation 2024

**Get thee to a graduation

Google tells me that 3.5 million students will graduate from high school in the U.S. this year.  Add in college, elementary, middle, and technical school graduates, and the Class of 2024 will surely exceed 20 million. In this season of graduation, I write to encourage you to do two things. 1. Attend someone’s graduation, and 2. Allow yourself to have your own graduation – wherein (sorry for using “wherein” – read on, and you will learn it is a word I am about to stop using) you permit yourself to commence your own next stage of life.

First, why bother attending someone else’s graduation? Short answer? Support! You may think it is not worth your time to fight traffic, perhaps travel to another city, and sit through endless mediocre speeches to see your graduate walk across a stage for 30 seconds. It is worth it.  That magical smile on your graduate’s face when they see “their posse” in the audience is priceless.  Whether their posse is just you or you plus a bunch of other relatives, your graduate has an invaluable lesson imprinted on their psyche: “My family values me,” and “I matter to these people.”

Lest I sound too preachy on the need to attend graduations, I must admit my own checkered past of not showing up for graduations.  Perhaps it was my 1970s hippie attitude of rejecting social norms, or perhaps I just had a good invitation to go camping instead, but I did not attend my college graduation.  I attended only part of my law school graduation.  And while 15 years later, I participated in the graduation ceremony for my master’s in taxation degree, I didn’t bother to invite my family.

Fortunately, I have grown out of that cynical beginning. I can now look back on four decades of never missing family graduations. Fifth grade, eighth grade, twelfth grade, college, and graduate degree graduations—I’ve been to a lot of them. I recognize the power of showing up. It is a gift to the graduate, and it is a gift to me. It is an essential stitch in a long-running quilt that sews our lives together.

My oldest grandchild’s college graduation is in a couple of weeks.  It is doubly special because his 2020 high school graduation was canceled due to COVID-19. (His parents arranged a backyard, socially distanced party – which was lovely, but not the same as walking across the stage in front of all your classmates, teachers, and families.)  I can’t wait to sit in that audience and give him a smile that conveys how incredibly proud I am of him.  The feeling I get from doing that may be more powerful than the feeling he gets – but in either case, it’s a wonderful opportunity to deepen our family bond.

My grandson’s college graduation coincides with the 50^th anniversary of my own college graduation (that one I refused to attend; happily, they did mail me the certificate).  This brings me to my second point – giving yourself permission to commence your own next stage of life. For me, it is a return to being a writer—a return to what I wanted to do as a young kid. I filled journals and notebooks with random Dear Diary thoughts.  At college parties, I was the one with tiny notebooks in my pocket, writing down every seemingly profound or hysterical thing I or my friends said. I was encouraged by my friends, who had a habit of putting Post-it notes on their refrigerator of all the profound things that I or they said during a party.

That creative writing bug pretty much got drummed out of me by the time I finished law school. I learned legal and technical writing: be accurate, eliminate extra words, and get to the point.  It is very useful in writing legal briefs but somewhat boring when writing a story anyone would want to read. And if that wasn’t enough, I later became a tax lawyer.  Drafting documents that complied with the Internal Revenue Code, or writing a memo explaining some provision of the partnership tax laws, was the death knell to my creative writing skills.

 Now, in celebration of the 50^th anniversary of graduating from college, I’m setting aside my legal writing. Please, god, don’t ever let “hereinafter,” “whereas,” or “including but not limited to” ever again enter my lexicon. I want to embrace and rediscover that closeted writer of my youth.

I have a wish for you: Give yourself permission to let go of what others told you to become. Let go of what your younger self told you that you had to be. It’s time.

 If a somewhat nonsensical Post-it note appears on your refrigerator, it just might be from me.

And- OK – sorry, Mom.  I should have invited you to graduation.