Commencement

It’s strange.

Graduation has come and gone and it wasn’t as nerve-wracking an experience as I feared. If anything it was actually a little anticlimactic.

When it all boiled down to it, graduation was really nothing more than a boring march, boring speeches and watching the boring process of seeing 691 other souls walking up to Bro. Armin Luistro FSC and getting a mock diploma. My friend Martin Bañez’s speech was rather moving though, not least of which because to many eyes he looked like on the edge of tears (when he wasn’t). Adding to the anticlimax was the fact that it was simply another day with my beloved blockmates and friends, although we were all dressed like the obnoxious savants of “Beat the Geeks.”

What’s more, after graduation, I didn’t find myself in an expensive restaurant eating at a buffet. No, no, none of that pompousness—that afternoon I was doing grocery shopping and singing in the choir, and that evening I brought and fetched Bianca to and from Mari’s graduation house party. A very ordinary day indeed it was, one without any extraordinary tension or excitement.

Perhaps it just hasn’t struck me yet, the realization that I will not see these wonderful people who are my batchmates again—at least until we organize block outings or come together in some batch reunion so many years later. Or perhaps it’s just that I am more mature and nonchalant about these things—that yes, there are people whom I simply have to see again indefinitely later, because at this point in time I have to meet even more new faces.

Either way, I’m going back to school tomorrow and the rest of the week—this time as an alumnus looking for a job. I’ve got a job interview tomorrow in Makati too—one I’m not really taking all that seriously, but will be helpful anyway as practice.

Sobering, isn’t it?