WOLVERINE PRIDE!!

So maybe I missed graduation at the Big House. Maybe I missed the speeches, the hat tosses, the graduation gowns, and the last hooray in Ann Arbor. It's true that I never experienced the tears, the fears, the laughs, the cries, the beer pong with parents or the fancy dinner at Chophouse....the final parties, the goodbyes, the good lucks and good days. Maybe I did miss out on the whole "graduation weekend" thing, and I certainly never experienced a moment when all of a sudden, I was pronounced a college graduate by Mary Sue Coleman herself. While my peers were graduating, I was still in class (let's be honest...given the time change, I was probably sleeping or in a pub). While my classmates were tossing their caps in the air, looking up towards the beautiful Ann Arbor sky and wondering what the future would bring, I was laying out on a beach in Australia--without a care in the world.

By the time I finished (and passed) my last class as an undergraduate, it was mid-June. Nobody said, "Congratulations, Mariah. You've busted your ass for four years, and you're now a college graduate. Good work." I never did don a cap and gown, and my parents did not take me out to dinner or give me a grandiose lecture about my future. But one winter day in August (yes, it gets down to 50 degrees in Australia--crazy, I know), my diploma arrived in the mail. It had taken weeks to get here, and it showed: there was a tear in it. At first, I was devastated. I determined that come 1 am, I would call the office of the registrar (it would be late morning in America) and bitterly demand that a new diploma be sent immediately. Of course, 1 am usually found me either sleeping or drinking--not ideal situations to be complaining in--and I kept putting it off and putting it off.

Now my diploma hangs brilliantly on my wall, laminated with pride. The tear is still noticeable, but barely. And it reminds me on a daily basis that while I missed the Big House, the Big Day and the Big Speech, I didn't (and still don't) miss out on tearin' it up down under (yes, I just said that). Who cares, anyway? A silly little rip in a single piece of paper doesn't and will never change the fact that I'm still a graduate of the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN...and I'm as proud as ever to be a Wolverine. GO BLUE!!!