Congrats, Grad...

I'm sitting here at Northern Lights, the cafe where I held most of my office hours as a graduate student.

I got to UCLA around 10:30 this morning, thinking I'd need time for all the errands I had to run (pick up my cap and gown, graduation tickets, etc.) and hoping that I would like to stroll around campus a little to make a last goodbye.  I'm coming down with my mom, dad, and sister for my hooding ceremony tomorrow, and then it might be a while before I come back.

But mostly I'm just a little anxious.  I was walking around campus thinking, "I can't really get into this...I feel like a fish out of water..."  It's not like the feeling you get when leaving a home, like when I graduated from college and had to leave Candice and Kay and our Henry St. apartment.

I think it's because I'm not sure what having a PhD means yet--once I start teaching again, I'll probably feel a little better.  A PhD is a degree that teaches you lots of skills that you can use to make things easier for other people.  Right?  At least, that's what my version of the PhD is...

I felt better when I bumped into Emily and her family.  And then I thought that if I was really trying to have a final day of grad school, I should probably go eat a sort of crummy wheat bagel from Northern Lights and wash it down with some tea.

Somehow this is appropriate.  I spent a lot of time in grad school by myself, with some work in front of me, occasionally taking a bite of my breakfast/lunch/dinner at a cafe somewhere.  Aside from the meetings with students, the classes, the dinners here and there with friends--it's mostly been me and bagels.

And, for all of that, I think I did okay...