Graduation
I so hate useless ceremonies. Luckily, now that I'm done with my college graduation, I shouldn't have to face another on this scale for another 5 to 6 years if all goes as planned.
The whole thing was just such a painful waste of time. I personally see no purpose to wearing (expensive) archaic clothes and listening to administrators recite platitudes. I know college was tough, after all, I'm the one who just finished it, but so have many thousands of other people. It's also nice to hear about how I'll now have the opportunity to go forth and (try to) shape the world, but it's not exactly news.
The worst part of all is the crowding. I don't like crowds; after only a few minutes of way too many people talking all around me my ears start to buzz unpleasantly with each new sound. My graduating class contained about 2600 people, I believe, and assuming that each one brought four to five guests, that means there were over 14000 people on the campus today, all outside at once. That's more than the schools entire normal population, which furthermore doesn't usually all decide to go out and trample the lawns to mud.
The one good aspect is that the annoyance has kept me from having the chance to really reflect and feel nostalgic. I'm very attached to the university, its campus, and the friends I have there. I'm not looking forward to leaving that all behind and going somewhere where I know maybe half a dozen people from a single meeting. It particularly hurts because I just know that I will never see most of those people again; I'm not terribly good at staying in touch with people, and I usually rely on face-to-face contact rather than telephones, instant messaging or email.
Just looking back at what I've written here I see that my fiery red mood of grouchiness is rapidly dissolving into a deep cerulean mood of nostalgia. I must seek other distraction to stave this off.