Graduation

We're graduating this Saturday!  I can't even believe it, it feels so surreal.  Next Monday I should be waking up at 6AM, like I have been doing every day Monday - Friday for 13 years, but I won't be.  And I never will be ever again.  Instead of coming back to Saipan and dragging my feet to SIS, in the fall I will be studying animation in Savannah, Georgia, at the Savannah College of Art and Design.  I can't believe it.  I just... can't believe it.

We got our gowns today at lunch.  Mine is size 5'10" - 6'0", so we'll see how that goes.  Maybe we'll be swaggalicious and krump all the way to the stage.  Have you heard about the senior prank where all the students gave something to the headmaster in exchange for their diplomas?  They handed him rubber balls, paperclips, loose change, and other odds and ends when they received their diplomas.  I think it's pretty funny.

Diploma...  It all sounds so formal.  And I guess it should be, since we've been working for this thing practically our entire lives.  I mean, this is where our real lives start.  After this, we'll all be figuring out who we are, and after that, we'll be getting jobs, getting married, and raising families.  It's so weird.  So you're telling me that I'm going to be independent from now on, and that I won't be living with my parents?  I'm not sure how I'll be able to take it...

I'm excited, to say the least.  Enthusiastic, enthralled, practically bursting with ambitions and dreams for the future.  All of my hopes are riding on this diploma Dr. Jenkins will be casually handing to me as he reads off all of our names in alphabetical order.  I am #5, not too early, not too late.  He'll call "Amelia Faye Costelo Hudkins" and I'll push and shove everyone out of my way to get my diploma and out of here.

I wonder if people will remember me fondly.  How will they remember me as?  Abel's girlfriend, Abby's sister.  I hope more people know me as the tall girl, plays basketball.  Moreso as the girl who does art and all of the school t-shirts and yearbook pages.  But what I really really hope people remember as Amy.  Plain and simple, with too many words to describe me in just an offhanded phrase.

I want to make all the people I know here proud.  I want to be so many things.  Graduation is only the first step on the ladder.