Graduation

I finally graduated. Two years and a million lives later. It is so nice to be done. I'm ready for it. I never thought I'd be glad not to have classes. I've always thought of myself as a perennial student. I'd take classes forever if I could. But not now. I'm done. It's time I moved out of the protective environment of my Alma Mater. It's time to leave home.


This is Mitch. I met Mitch in my first semester and we became best friends. He has now moved to California. I'm really sad but that's what I get for making friends in college where most students do move on. This is one of my favorite graduation photos. I don't remember who took it, though. I think it was Mitch's mom.


As a master student, part of the graduate experience is being hooded. The hood is a sash that drapes down your back. When I opened the carefully wrapped square-shaped plastic bag that had my rented hood in it and pulled it out, I gasped.

"It's a vagina!" I cried. (I live alone. I can blurt out things like that.)

Imagine a Georgia O'Keefe flower painting...yes it's a flower, but it's also a vagina! Well, that's what a hood is. Yes, it's a hood, but, OMG, it's also a vagina! The pointed, oval shape. The folds. Then the clincher is this quirky hooky thing at the bottom that looks like...forgive the vernacular...a clit (I can't believe I'm writing that, but it's true!)

What's even more funny about graduating from Indiana University is that the colors are crimson and cream so it has a blood and skin reference to it!


Needless to say, as I watched all these masters and doctors walking around with their heads sticking out a metaphorical vagina, it made the ceremony palatable for me! (I don't care for graduation ceremonies...I only came because--OMG! this is too funny, I just now realized why I came--I came because of the hooding! hooowheehehehehe!)

On a more philosophical note, however, I'm glad the hoods have a vaginal look to them. As I said above, I don't care for graduation ceremonies. I haven't attended mine in the past because they really had no significant meanings for me. But this one did and discovering the "birthing" metaphor via the hood solidified the ritual.

I am a ritualistic person. I believe in the subconscious need for ritual and meaning. But the ritual must have meaning to my conscious, also, so that I can fully experience it.


Mark McCreary hooded me. It had to be Mark. He has been extremely influential in my life. If he didn't or couldn't hood me, I wouldn't have gone. Period. I was "birthed" into a new life. That's what the hooding ceremony means to me. Graduation indicates a moving on, but the hooding is the actual birthing. And I don't think it's coincidence that we call the college we attend our alma MATER

So for all it's quirkiness and humor, the hoods are pregnant with meaning (pun intended).