The Road to College Graduation

I had no classes during the final week of college leading up to graduation. It was nice because I only had one final to take and I was done. The rest of the week was spent working and moving my stuff into my new apartment.

Even though I wasn't supposed to move in until Friday, May 9th, I would finish my shift at the radio station at 6am, drive the 1.25 mile distance from work to the apartment and sleep on the bed. It was so nice to so longer have to sleep on the floor in the back offices. It was Wednesday night, the 7th, that I started moving stuff from my dorm room into the apartment. Since I had to carry everything upstairs, I was certainly glad I didn't have to move any furniture.

That night, I went to a pizza place across the street called Ken's Pizza. They had a special deal on Wednesday nights in which you could get half off a regular pizza. I walked over and back. That began my tradition of always having pizza my first night in a new apartment. As I mentioned in the last post, I couldn't figure out how to turn the dining room light up. The only light I had was this ceramic owl that Grandma Ogolon had made me for Christmas one year. That's what I had to use for illumination.

On Thursday, I returned to my dorm room one last time and spent all day cleaning it up and getting the last of my stuff out so I could take it to Clovis. The nice thing about those 10' x 10' rooms is that they didn't take very long to clean. When I went back to the apartment that night, I walked over to the mall and ran into a couple of people I knew from college. I invited them over to see the apartment, but they didn't want to come. I was rather disappointed that they didn't want to check it out.

Friday afternoon, I woke up and went out to get something to eat. I drove to Kentucky Fried Chicken. When I came back out and started my car, my "ALT" indicator light came on. I didn't know exactly what was wrong, but I knew it meant I wasn't going to be able to drive home. I was able to get the car back to the apartment. I went to a pay phone and called Grandma Ogolon. I told her I had trouble with the car and asked her to come from Portales to pick me up so I could make it to graduation that night. That would have been really bad if this situation had kept me out of the commencement.

She showed up about an hour later and drove me back to Portales. After awhile, the entire family showed up. Mom, Dad and Loyd were there. Loyd's girlfriend from West Texas State University was with him. My cousin Rud was also graduating, so Aunt Berd and Uncle Wind had showed up. Also, Aunt Pand and Uncle Rid came with my cousin Mad. Mad was the only cousin who was at both my high school and college graduations. A few years later, I got to return the favor by going to his high school graduation.

I've written about some of the stuff that took place immediately before the ceremony. In all the years I had gone to Eastern, I had never attended commencement. I always just wanted to go straight home after finishing my finals. This left me unprepared for what I would see the monent I entered the main floor of the Greyhound Arena. IT WAS COMPLETELY PACKED WITH PEOPLE! I'd been there for concerts and never saw this many people there. It looked like there was no room to sit down.

Some 14 years earlier, I had attended an Artesia High School graduation. At that ceremony, the students threw their caps in the air at the end. I then went to Uncle Ord's graduation at ENMU. Not one student threw a cap. I was shocked. I asked my Dad why they didn't throw their caps. He replied, "It's because they're grown up." At that point, I thought I would be officially grown up once I graduated from college.

There was a lot of craziness that took place while we were marching in. (This was probably caused by the fact that we didn't rehearse like we did in high school. But there were way too many students to try to organize a rehearsal. I guess they figured we'd all done high school and knew what to do.) A lot of students had put words in masking tape on their caps. Some wore novelty sunglasses. There was a lot of revelry taking place while we were marching in. I knew that caps were going to be flying all over the place at the end. I was kind of saddened by that. I felt like we hadn't really grown up like we were supposed to.

College graduation is different from high school graduation in that you don't march side by side with a partner. It's basically one long line. (Really, it was two. Two groups entered from opposite sides of the arena.) At ENMU, everybody from each department got called up on stage alphabetically. My mother had asked if I had a marching partner. (I guess she was hoping again that I had found someone to date.) I told her no, there were no marching partners. She said that she and Dad got to march together at their graduation. I told her that was because they were married and had the same last name so they would have been positioned alphabetically, but they really weren't partners. That wasn't the way she remembered it.

I was fortunate in that I had a woman go right before me. I was followed by a guy whom I knew from the Radio/TV Department. It turned out the woman was the University President's daughter. I had never met her or even knew she existed the whole four years I was there, but I guess she was known for rollerskating all over campus. Her father became President the summer after my freshman year. During the ceremony, she talked to me like we had always known each other. Even though she was very attractive, I figured she already had a boyfriend and decided that all I could do was enjoy that time for what it was worth and not try to take it any further.

I wasn't aware of any graduation parties, so I didn't go to any. I just went to Grandma Ogolon's house with my family. My cousin Rud also went there for the whole evening. We had a good time.

Afterward, Loyd, his girlfriend and I drove up to my apartment in Clovis in his car. I don't remember why, but I had to drive. Loyd's car had a problem in that you couldn't get it to shift into first gear, but the other gears were okay. We got there and spent the night. Mom and Dad would come up the next day and I had to work at the radio station. Some interesting stuff happened that day. I'll get into that tomorrow.

As for that woman ahead of me at commencement, she became a pediatrician in Cincinnati, OH. From what I was able to tell on her Facebook page, she got married to another pediatrician in 1990 and had one daughter who is grown now. The guy she married is on my level of attractiveness, so maybe I would have had a shot at her if I had decided to go to medical school. Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.