The Ten Most Memorable Events of My Twenties

6. Graduating From College
May 21, 1995
Age: 21

My whole life, my measurement of time was the semester. My measurement of success was the grade. My role in life was to learn. Growing up, I had this vague notion that someday it would all end, but when it would happen seemed far-off and indefinite. Surely I’d be ready, right? Surely I’d have undergone some internal transformation, just in time to graduate.

Hah.

Graduating from college was pretty traumatic for me. I’d hated UVa when I’d first arrived, but by the end, I’d come to love it. I was a columnist for one of the school papers, and I wrote about these feelings in a little elegy a few weeks before graduating.

I had no idea what to do once college ended. I was a history major with no job lined up. I didn’t even know where I wanted to live. I didn’t want this day to come.

Springtime. Final exams. Final papers. One last Beach Week in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Friday, back up to UVa and my family arrives. Saturday afternoon, walking around the Grounds (as they call the campus there), seeing all these visitors in suits and flowered dresses. Saturday night, one last Glee Club concert. Sunday morning, a beautiful day, all us graduating fourth-years processing down the Lawn. Sunday evening, dinner with my family at the Boar’s Head.

The next morning, my family comes to my dorm room. I’ve packed up everything, except my wall is covered in old Glee Club posters and flyers and I haven’t been able to bring myself to take them down yet. My dad gets annoyed and starts taking them down, quickly. I’m heartbroken.

On Monday we drive back home to New Jersey separately: my family in one car, and a few hours later, me in my own car.

As I drive along Route 64 that afternoon, I listen to CDs of UVa singing groups and I start to cry. Everything’s behind me now. I’m driving off a cliff.

And then, out of the blue, I envision a day in the distant future, when I’ve established a new life, a life with stability. Living in the present. Not having to feel this fear anymore, because I’m surrounded by a new structure, new things, and there’s no need to miss UVa anymore. Driving along the highway, I have no idea when that day will come, but I know it will come someday.

Finally, that evening, I pull into the driveway of my parents’ house, where I’ll be living until I figure out what to do with myself. My parents come out onto the front steps and start applauding. I begin sobbing. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with my family. I want to be back at school, in a place I’ve come to love, with my friends who won’t judge me.

The punch line, of course, is that at the end of the summer I wind up going back to UVa, working there for a year, and then spending three more years there earning a law degree. I stay there until I’m 25 years old.

But I didn’t know that at the time. Sitting in my car in the driveway in the dusk, my parents clapping for me on the front steps, all I felt was dread.