© Chris Black 2001
I'm pleased to receive this certificate, and I thank everyone who helped and inspired me as I approached the moment it recognizes. However, I'd like to clarify what it means to me to be holding this paper.
To me this certificate does not represent a decree of Fully Educated Status. I would not accept any paper that proposed to give such a presumptuous title. This paper does not give me the right to vote, or to drive, or any other civic freedom not available without it. This certificate simply states that I have earned a transition ceremony. That's what graduation is, no more or less.
"A transition to and from what, though?" I ask myself. It strikes me as a little odd that I should be celebrating today as any kind of special occasion. How is the self I become today more like the self I will be tomorrow than the self I was yesterday?
There is no institution reliquishing or claiming me on this paper's recommendation. I have no plans to make any drastic changes in my daily routine. Perhaps I am at a moment when my life will begin to move faster, but this is a gradual process that can't be traced to one originating moment.
I recall a day last summer, when I was in the middle of a month-long bicycle trip. A full week into the trip, one of the friends I was riding with looked up and said "I just realized that we're really doing this." That's how I feel today. By entering this transition ceremony of graduation, I am taking a moment to realize that I'm really doing this. I'm alive, and I have been for long enough to glimpse what an achievement that is.
Every commencement speech I've ever heard seems to have the same message: "You are ready. Now go, and begin." I'm here to say that I am ready, because I have already begun.