- Bristol Buchanan,
ISU speech pathology major
NORMAL—Zip up the floor length gown (“It looks like I’m in choir”), put on the black cap (“Does the tassel go on the right or the left?”), and practice walking across the stage in the odd-looking outfit (“This is it.”)
While that was the routine and thought process for millions of soon-to-be high school graduates almost four years ago, myself included, those same students who decided to prolong their education will go through the same routine these next couple of weeks as they prepare for college graduation.
For soon-to-be Illinois State graduates, May 11and12 will mark the end of an era, no more school, and the beginning of their professional careers. But for some, graduation is only the end of an undergraduate era, as the next couple of years mean only more school and more educational stress.
“Are you excited for graduation?” my parents asked me this past weekend.
“Sort of,” I responded, with mixed emotions. “How can I be that happy about graduation when I’m still going to be at school another two years?”
My response, however, is not unique, as thousands of people will go from accepting their undergraduate degree to beginning graduate school only months later. The decision to continue higher education, though, is becoming ever more common due to the state of America’s economy and the scarcity of jobs for college graduates. Graduate school has also become a popular choice among students who realized their dream job requires more education than a four-year degree.
For myself, attending grad school never crossed my mind, until I realized what I truly wanted to do post-graduation. I want to become a sports information director, which relates very little to my soon-to-be degrees in English and journalism, and largely requires a grad school degree. Thus, I decided to extend my stay at ISU and join the sports management graduate program. (Thankfully I was accepted and a graduate assistantship will be paying for my education.)
But for somestudents, like Bristol Buchanan, a speech pathology major at ISU, continuing high education in her career path is a requirement.
“I knew since freshman year when I entered the speech pathology field that grad school was in my future,” the senior said. “It was always a little daunting, and now with graduation approaching it makes May 11 less exciting. It’s nice to be done with my undergrad, but there still is a whole other chapter of education ahead of me.”
While Buchanan has mixed emotions about entering grad school after walking across the stage in only a couple weeks, some near graduate students are looking forward to a different level of education.
“I am really excited to begin grad school,” future medical school student Jennifer Clark said. “This is something I have looked forward to for years, and to actually begin learning about the exact things I want to focus on makes me happy. I hated taking gen eds, and it will be nice to be treated with a greater level of respect at grad school. My undergrad was just the beginning of my education.”
Similar to Clark, I see my four years spent at ISU as the beginning of my education, which makes May 11 even more of a complicated date. But I also view the past four years as some of the best years of my life. I gained lifelong friends in Normal, I made some major mistakes and learned from them, I had some awesome successes I will never forget, and I discovered what I want to do with my future.
“It’s hard to be happy about graduation when I’m worried the next two years will be a massive disappointment compared to these past four,” I told one of my best friends when describing my approaching graduation.
My friend put it best: “It will be just like freshman year all over again, but this time you are smarter and have a better idea of what you want to do. You can be happy about graduating, you earned it, so don’t look past it as some lame ceremony that marks the beginning of grad school; look at it as a ceremony that marks the end of the best years of your life and the start of even better years.”
So maybe for those soon-to-be college graduates who will go from one degree to the other, the upcoming ceremony should have only one feeling associated with it: happiness. No matter what lays ahead, May 11and12 should be a time without anxiety, mixed emotions, and nervousness; it should instead be a celebration of how far we have come.
“I worked so hard these past four years and I need to celebrate just like everyone else,” Buchanan said. “I yearn to have a normal graduation even if I will have another one in two years.”
So after everyone has crossed the stage and when the class of 2012 is officially announced, soon-to-be graduate school students can put aside their feelings about the future and live in the moment, tossing their caps high into the air like their graduate peers.
“You only graduate college once…or twice,” Clark said, with a laugh.