Rose Richard

As all my faithful readers know, I hate school and pray for a magical diploma to be dropped from the heavens, so I can just get on with my life. I got a letter in the mail from the Portland State Commencement Office. I didn’t even know such an office existed. This letter congratulated me on my impending graduation, and asked if I would like to buy a bunch of useless crap from Jostens.

I almost peed my pants.

I’m graduating? Surely, this letter wasn’t even a form letter, just two cardboard cards telling me where to register for graduation and when the graduation fair would be held. Conveniently, I could also fill out the included forms and order my announcements and cap and gown as well.

I called all important family members, my three important friends as well as my myriad unimportant friends. Everyone was very happy for me.

I, of course, was the happiest of all.

Then, I got to school and was telling everyone how happy I was and they were like, “Well, did you get your audit back or did you just get that thing for Jostens?” Damn. The audit. The biggest moment of truth. Will I have to stay during summer term to take my last Junior Clusterfuck course for university studies?

Of course, now I’m mad at my “friends” for pissing on my parade. I was happy for a whole weekend, which is kind of rare nowadays. All I want in life is to graduate from college and to have a couple million magically appear in my bank account. I want to sit and watch TV all day.

I do not want to think about career planning, graduate school or paying back my loans. I have got to marry some rich old guy who has no offspring and will die quickly. I am surely going to be sent to hell.

Why couldn’t they send the audit first, before teasing me so unkindly with this letter, shilling Jostens? Do they not care about my fragile mental status?

They want me to buy a bunch of useless crap from Jostens, and then not be able to refund it. I mean, how embarrassing would it be to send out personalized, engraved invitations and then find out you can’t even graduate, much less walk in June? That’s pretty pathetic if you ask me, and I fear being in this position.

I’m at the point in my academics where I feel that I’m totally at the mercy of the capricious whims of both my professors and the university. I have this incredible sense of impending doom that somehow, I have not completed some arcane requirement and will not be able to graduate until I’m 30, or that I’ll fail every single class I’m taking.

Frankly, I think Jostens and/or the university should refrain from sending us their order forms until audits have been sent out. It’s simply not fair to tease poor seniors whose mental health has been jeopardized by prolonged exposure to school. I have neither the time nor the inclination to be jerked around by Jostens’ ordering policies. I’m going to buy all my things at the bookstore anyway. It’s still Jostens, but I pay a dollar less, and I don’t have to pay shipping and handling.

Besides, graduation gowns are like bridesmaids dresses. You only wear them once, they’re ugly and you’ll never wear it again, unless you are stupid enough to get another bachelor’s degree. If you go on in your education, you just have to buy increasingly more expensive and ugly robes. At least I’m not one of those poor suckers that has to wear a BROWN tassel. Who even thought of brown as an academic color anyway? I think it should be like high school where we all wear the same color tassel. Because if you come right down to it, who cares what your major is now that you have a degree – if you really are graduating.