The Graduate

In which I revel in my accomplishments and ponder

April 10, 2024

Dear Smythe,

I did it! I graduated! You are now corresponding with a Master Writer, and I’ve got a framed diploma to show it. I won’t say the graduation events went perfectly (they didn’t), but I want to ignore all of that and just bask in this feeling. I did this. I made this happen against all odds. I moved alone to a new country where I didn’t know a soul; I started a program feeling terrified and certainly like an imposter. I spent my first month in Ireland with the pervasive, unsettling feeling that I had made an enormous mistake leaving behind my career (a successful one), my work colleagues (who I loved, who felt like my community), my cats (who thankfully are back with me now), my few friends, and the only place, even today, that I have ever called home: my beautiful, bright, golden-floored apartment in DC that sat right on the National Mall.

It wasn’t easy leaving all of that behind. But it was the only choice I could have made, and if I hadn’t done it, I know I would be far worse off now.

Graduations are strange events. We place so much emphasis on the ceremony, the robes, the photographs, when really the magic happens in the months and years preceding. My Bachelor’s graduation, by the way, was pure disaster. After a false declaration of rain, the ceremony and events were shoved last-minute into the Dickinson College gymnasium, which had absolutely no ventilation or circulation whatsoever. I remember little about the several hour event but for the stifling, 100°F (and more) heat. Ian McEwan and Mark Ruffalo both spoke, which on any other occasion would have put stars in my eyes. But on that day, I was more focused on the students and adults who were fainting, vomiting, and being carried away by medical services. Until suddenly I was focused on trying to keep the remnants of Senior Week celebrations within myself and not without. (You will be pleased to know I succeeded, but at some cost. You will see upon me a distinct sheen in all of my graduation photos from 2015.)

That graduation was pretty much a write-off. But it didn’t matter, because what I carry with me all these years later isn’t what happened on that day, but the memories from the two years before. I grew up at Dickinson. After being homeschooled my entire life, and fairly isolated from the world, Dickinson was the first time I was away from home. It was where I first started to learn how to just be me, even if I didn’t know who she really was. I made friends, I lost friends, I struggled, I partied, I read, I wrote, I read some more, I made art, I took up smoking, I quit smoking, I drank (and I never quite quit that). It was a chapter of my life without which I could have never become the person who I am today.

It will probably take me years to understand the effects my year studying at Dublin City University has had on me. I’ve got a bloody diploma to show for it, though, and I am damn proud of that. I have written and written and even gotten published – PUBLISHED! – and I have a seed of a feeling telling me this is just the start. I’ve made friends which whom I’ve shared stories and experiences; and my favorite ones will always be the long nights at the Cat & Cage. We’ve gone to each other’s plays, raised funds to support each other’s work, and celebrated each other’s publications. Wherever I go in this world, I know I will have the community we formed at DCU behind me, and I will always be behind them. That assurance is, I think, the greatest gift of all. Because it isn’t that I did it – we did. And I would not have it any other way.

I’ve got tears in my eyes now, and I’m rather sick of crying as I seem to do a lot of it these days so I’ll close my letter on what I hope is a humorous note. On graduation day this past Friday, I rested my right food on the step to the stage and waited for my name to be called out. When I heard it, I took a step, then I was faced with an immediate horror and certainty that the long slit running up the front of my dress had shifted too high and the entire faculty and audience could see my lacy black underwear. Unfortunately, I was also faced with another horror which was that I was suffering from vertigo and stage fright and the certainty that if I moved my hands to try and pull my dress down, I would without a doubt collapse into a heap in front of the entire auditorium. So, I put one wobbly foot in front of the other and hobbled as quickly as I could to the center of the stage, where the President gave me my diploma. I smiled and gazed deeply into his eyes as I wondered how much less he thought of me now that he had seen my knickers.

“Congratulations, Marguerite,” he leaned in, “Is that your family behind you there? Turn around so they can get a picture.”

I turned around and gazed into a heaving black mass, smiled, and then rushed to the other side of the stage towards our program head, who was also my thesis supervisor, who was obviously also shocked by the sight of my fanny.

“Congratulations, Marguerite,” he said.

I nodded and rushed off the stage, the paper in my hand trembling for some reason. But the nerves started to settle now that nobody’s eyes were on me. Well, nobody’s eyes but one pair; for when I headed back towards my seat, I saw Yael, their eyes wet, their smile enormous, and I rushed towards them and grasped them in a gigantic, warm hug.

“We are awesome,” Yael said.

“Yes, we are,” I whispered, my throat clogging. I held them, and it hit me.

We did it.

Warmly,

Marguerite

P.S. After watching several videos of my graduation walk across the stage, I am delighted to inform you that the slit on my dress came nowhere near my nether regions and the only person to have seen my hoo-haa that day was my partner later in the evening. I’ll leave those details undisclosed.