Pomp and Circumstance.

This was definitely not a normal morning commute - there were too many suit coats and shiny shoes getting off the train at Harvard Square, and too many families. Usually it's just me and the other Harvard employees getting off the train, but, because today is Commencement Day at Harvard, things are changed. My library is open essentially as a bathroom for the crowds of people who are already swarming the Yard. See?
Maybe I'm okay with us being the campus bathroom for the day (or at least until noon, when the morning exercises are over and the circ desk opens and we are a functioning library again). It gives me an excuse to be here, witnessing the first (of many?) Harvard graduations. It will likely be a quiet day, at least in here, so I can get some work done. And I can also reflect, fondly and perhaps not-so-fondly, on my own college commencements.

I had written "college commencement" above, but then I remembered that I have two degrees, went to two commencement ceremonies, and went through those rituals twice. I always forget about my Simmons experience. It's somewhat fitting that the Simmons College t-shirt that I put into my quilt didn't fit, and that I had to truncate it down to say simply "Simmon." That's kind of fitting for my memories of the place; truncated and incomplete. That's a part of my life that has not really been branded into my mind. Was it a difficult time? Hard? Confusing? I'm not sure. In many ways I think I really liked that time of my life. I felt like an adult, whatever that means. But whatever I was thinking or feeling or experiencing during that time of my life (which is now seven years ago) it was not the schooling that left an impression.

Which leads me to wonder what these graduates are thinking and feeling today as they march to their seats that fill the Yard. Do they have jobs? Do they have career paths? Do they think that they do but then will discover that what they thought they were all about really isn't true, and will change their mind sometime in their late twenties when they realize that life really isn't what they thought it was after all? Perhaps that last question was a little too insightful, a little too telling about what my own experience was post-college. When I graduated from UCONN, now ten years ago almost to the day, I could not have told you what I wanted to do with my life. Job? Career? Had no clue, and I knew I had no clue. But I could have told you what I wanted to feel in my life. I wanted a worry-free future. Something exciting, yet also very stable. I would have told you that I was going to travel to Europe each year, find a job that would allow me to incorporate my interest in and ability wth French, and I would move far away from my hometown. I would be a cosmopolitan jetsetter. I would live the life of a Lonely Planet author, exploring fun places and writing about then for all to read. I would be like Anna Wintour, amazingly chic and sure of myself. Business-like. I would wear great clothes to work, take care of my appearance, have the career and the family and the hobbies and the life that women dream of, and do something that everyone - everyone - would know about. That's what I would have told you then.

If I were graduating now, what would I tell you about my hopes and dreams? Isn't that what graduations are for? For thinking about the future? You're done with one part of your life, and now move on to the next. Can life be segmented like that? Am I different than the person I was when I wore my cap and gown in Gampel Pavillion those ten years ago, or when I marched alongside my fellow librarians at the Boston Convention Center five years ago? Who knows. Maybe. In ways, yes. But not in other ways. I still can't tell you what I want to do for a career, but I am closer to being able to tell you that. And I know that I can have that Lonely Planet lifestyle, but I have to have some kind of means to support that lifestyle and it can't be my parents. Anna Wintour's life is still very intriguing, but so is coming home to my little house and my little yard and seeing Doug and petting the cats and sitting at the table in my dining room to eat my dinner and read my book. So there are things that I know now that I did not know then, at either graduation day.

So I guess you don't learn it all in college. I guess school doesn't teach you everything. When these graduates leave the Yard and go out into the real world they will still be learning. They will still be exploring their life. Maybe Harvard has set them up for great success in that. I hope so. But for now, today, they can come into my library and use our bathrooms and think about that thing called the future after the ceremonies and fanfare. Let them enjoy their day.