One day, two graduations

The only other one I had ever attended was my own, and I nearly didn’t participate in that one.

I was at my third college and it was December. I was graduating with just one credit more than required.

I wasn’t ready to graduate because I had no idea what I would do with myself or what I wanted to do.

I didn’t want to go because my education was a patchwork. I hadn’t started and finished with one class at one college. I felt my graduation was singular and didn’t need to be shared with others.

My parents had other ideas.

My parents paid for four semesters, but I had used a series of part-time jobs during the school year and full-time jobs during the summer to finance the rest, which was another six semesters. It wasn’t that hard back then, mainly since I lived rent-free with my folks.

It was a low-key December graduation in the Hawkins Hall auditorium at Plattsburgh State.

The college president, whose name escapes me, was the only speaker. I sat next to my high school classmate Terry. I have never figured out why he graduated from Plattsburgh in December, but there we were.

We had our names written on note cards that we handed to a professor on the edge of the stage, who read out our names as we received an empty folder. There was a rumor that several underclass students attended graduation and walked across the stage using fake names.

Since then, I have attended four Clarkson University and four SUNY Canton and one St. Lawrence University graduations.

This year, while waiting for the bagpipes to signal the start of the Clarkson event, it occurred to me that most people outside the college community don’t attend that many graduations.

You go to your own, your kids, maybe grandchildren — a graduation every generation.

Now that I have left behind the cynical young man who attended my first graduation, I have to tell you that graduations are powerful.

I have tears in my eyes at each one at some point.

It could be the sight of parents stretching their necks high to get a glimpse of their graduate. It could be the sight of a toddler who has escaped her parents, running across the floor. Or the story of a student who beat the odds or found their calling. Something happens and I realized the magnitude of it all and I well up.

It is a long Saturday for me and my buddy Chris Lenney, the photographer. We finished at about 6 p.m. this year with a beer on my front porch.

“If we hadn’t done this today, I don’t know what I would have done,” I told Chris. “I guess this is what we do.”

My questions at my first graduation were apparently answered when I wasn’t looking.

Sometimes two graduations in one day are too much and some days, they are not enough.

Tom Graser is the editor of the St. Lawrence Plaindealer. When not editing the Plaindealer, Tom has been playing Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and wishes not to be disturbed.