So here is my blog entry for graduation like I promised. I've just gotten overwhelmingly tired now, don't really understand why. However, I've promised a blog entry concerning graduation so that I will provide "ya'll" with. Well maybe I shouldn't because I just said ya'll and should be in bed. My Gott why am I so tired? I feel like I got hit in the face with something... oh wait, that was the paint can! Joking alright so here's graduation (I wanted to add Dutch and Afrikaans to the header but the online dictionary I found had no entry under the English word graduation. Interesting)
On the day I was supposed to get Paint Training 101 in Manchester, NH, not England, I went to MA with Rene. I took the bus down to Waterbury in CT so I could meet up with my friend Annemarie on my way to graduation. I had to get a copy of my thesis - I thought that would be a good idea since I was supposed to present the damn thing in less than a week's time. So I pondered the reason why all bus stations in this icountry are fucking dives and tucked in to a wonderful meal of arroz, carne, frijoles, y platanos fritos at AM's house. But I'm not going to bore you all with details of the entire week. Basically I traveled through NH, MA, CT to Brookly and then met my fearless partner in crime Tohannash at Penn Station and traveled to the big city of Southampton Long Island. Man it was fun! Tohs and I ended up talking with her mother about the stupidity and unfairness of the white man to the Native American until about 3 in the morning. The town of Southampton wants to screw the Shinnecock Natives over right now so if anyone cares to look them up on google and support them in their fight for sovereignty, it would be much appreciated.
Saturday was the ceremony for Friends World. It started out as an unusual but lovely day nonetheless. I saw people who I had not seen in years and loved it. My friend Wren was there and I finally realised how much I missed alot of these people. My class (those that started with me and ended up graduating last weekend, 4 years on) was 10 people. A whole third of the class! There were two people there who I didn't want to see AT ALL. Fernando Vega and Aimee Webb. I don't care if they come across this blog because after what they did that weekend the little respect I had for them diminished even further. Both of them were supposed to present in front of me. I didn't want to, but I decided not to change my time of presentation because I was told I was put there to close of the LAST graduation ceremonies of Southampton College with a bang. I think I did. But I had seen Meg, a person from the England Center, so I went to say hi. I turned to go say hi to those two, Fernando and Aimee, and they were walking away. Later that day Fernando plucked up the courage to talk to me and I made sure to sound as confident as possible to him with my goals and plans in life so his WHAT IS ART? presentation would come across as the shit it was. :O( I just got really pissed because those fuckers forced their own issues onto my head when it was them who had the problems in the first place.
We then moved to the gym and heard a couple people talking to us. I like Tami Farber who graduated in 1999 (proudly on the ten year plan) and she was a member of the class that Marla Ruczika was in. For those of you who don't know she is the founder of the NGO CIVIC who died in Iraq on April 16. In my opinion the choice of having Tami as our "commencement speaker" was a brilliant idea. She graduates/survived Friends World (not many of us do that!) and now works at the UN for Humanitarian goals. She was in Malawi and has been through the program so could really tell us what to expect. We may not have had a traditional academic program, but we now have one hell of a resume and now who we are. This kind of goes along with my last blog. Is life just a journey of knowing who we are?
Sunday showed me that we are the outsiders. Friend's World has not been resident on Southampton College for 3 years now - at least the student body of it. So most people who were graduating on Sunday really had no idea who we were. :) But we had our cute sashes, world is your classroom cliche sprayed across and made the most noise throughout the ceremony. Steve Kroft was the Southies' commencement speaker and he was excellent too. I'm a little partial to Friend's World though. I just wanted to express my thanks somehow to the college and how much it has helped me. HOpefully it won't go under... phew I made it out.
Sleepy time
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