I used to have a rather simplistic view of Commencement Day and the conflicting emotions that it evokes. In my mind, I saw three distinct constituencies with three distinct emotional profiles: the new graduates elated and eager to move on to the next chapter – the faculty sad to see them go – and parents and other loved ones proud, relieved, and maybe a bit nervous. It’s as though we each had our own prescribed role to play in this elaborate pageant. But I’ve begun to realize that it’s so much more complicated than that, especially for the students, and that there is absolutely no point in painting with a broad brush. Yes indeed, there are students who are thrilled to finally reach this threshold and cannot wait to enter whatever new chapter is about to begin – but there are also students whose predominate emotion on such a day is sorrow over what and who they are leaving behind or fear of the unknown that stretches before them. And I strongly suspect that for most students, they are feeling a complex stew of all of these emotions and more. And as a faculty member, I’m beginning to realize how complicated my own emotions are on such a day. The farewells can be terribly wrenching- but they are also necessary and natural; indeed, no school can function and thrive without them. And the deeper and richer the connection is with a student, the harder it is to let them go. It means that intertwined with the pain is a lot of joy and gratitude as well.
I suspect that it is in such moments as these – fraught with such an array of intense feelings – that we gravitate to the reassuring framework of ritual. For me, it has gone beyond the ritual of the graduation ceremony itself. I have also engaged in a small, quiet ritual of my own on each and every commencement day for at least the last dozen years. I would take a few minutes the day before to purchase a card for each of my voice students who were about to graduate. Almost always, I would go to Barnes & Noble (plain old Hallmark or Carlton cards simply would not suffice) and carefully choose the perfect card for each student – and then write them a note to congratulate them, to affirm their strengths, to thank them, and to wish them well. Sometimes I would write those notes the day before, but most often I would do so in the couple hours of free time between the end of Baccalaureate and the start of Commencement. There was something sort of soothing about sitting quietly and reflecting on each of these students and what they meant to me and what my highest hopes for them were.
The last part of the ritual (that seems like an overly fancy word) involved heading over to the athletic arena where there were hundreds of folding chairs set up for the graduates to be seated in alphabetical order- with the back of each chair bearing a sign with the student’s last name. As soon as I arrived at the arena, I would go searching for the chair of each of “my” seniors and deposit the card there for them to find a few minutes later. Occasionally I would encounter them face to face- but in some ways I was just as happy if that didn’t happen and I was spared the awkward sadness of a spoken goodbye. In almost every instance, I would never know if what I had written to the student made much of an impression on them – or if they even kept the card or read it more than once (almost none of them ever said anything about the card to me) but that was okay because the act of writing down those thoughts and sharing them somehow gave me a sense of closure and helped me make peace with this difficult part of the life of a teacher.
This year, that ritual was sort of torn to shreds – most likely because the weekend’s schedule was drastically altered …. with Baccalaureate moved to Saturday night and Commencement shifted four earlier on Sunday. Something about that shift threw me completely for a loop to the point where I did not realize until Saturday night that I had neglected to buy any cards at all. With Barnes & Noble already closed and with the clock ticking, I ran to Target and grabbed four of the same generic graduation cards, with the intention of writing in them Sunday morning when I had a break during church. Unfortunately, church turned out to be complicated and I didn’t have so much as a moment to even think about those cards- and once I had parked the car in a distant lot and was rushing to get to the arena on time, I realized that I would have to dash off these notes in a terrible hurry once I got there.
Except that when I got to the arena and stepped into a quiet corner to get these notes written, I discovered to my horror that all I had were the envelops; somehow in my haste, the cards had slipped out of my bundle and fallen on the ground. In that moment, my timeworn ritual turned to dust.
And then, something great happened. Almost immediately, I ran into two of my senior voice students … Peter Burch and Joe Pettit … and enjoyed a nice exchange with both of them (and had the presence of mind to write their addresses on the envelops in the hopes of mailing a card to them later.) And we took the time to take photos to commemorate the moment.
And not even two minutes later, I ran into my third senior voice student, Christian Aldridge- as well as Sean Kelly, who had been my voice student for his first two years at Carthage before choosing to focus on musical theater exclusively and switching over to a MT specialist. Sean’s card was actually already done because I wrote it while I was walking from my car to the arena – which proved to be a really bad idea because writing a card while one is walking is not exactly conducive to coherent thought or legible handwriting. But Christian’s, like Joe’s and Peter’s, was not yet written- but I got his mailing address. But in the meantime, we shared a few quick words and did the picture thing.
I’m realizing now that the way things worked out today was almost better than the ritual I had so painstakingly followed for the previous ten-plus years. Writing those cards felt like an intensely emotional experience, but I think I had unconsciously shaped the ritual in order to avoid face-to-face goodbyes, which seems like an emotionally-stunted thing to do. Maybe the fruit basket upset of this weekend forced me to grow up a bit and face these farewells head on, as most grownups manage to do.
(P.S. – As I made my way back to my car after commencement, I stumbled across those three cards, which were lying on the ground exactly where I had accidentally dropped them. And one of these days, I’ll try to write something meaningful and send them off.)