Not Quite a Graduate

I walked across the stage two weeks ago today, graduation gown billowing and tassel smoking in the heat.  President Fox shook my hand, lots of people I don’t know snapped photos, and I became one of those driven, successful people who graduate college in four years.  Except that I haven’t graduated in four years.

My maroon diploma with its St. Lawrence crest reads “congratulations on your effort.”  The semester I took off junior year, according to our Office of Institutional Research, throws me out of the federally-defined “cohort” of students who enrolled in fall 2008 and will graduate by this summer.  My nonconsecutive eight semesters of undergrad is like a magic key to the 5-year graduation club.

  Showing off the fake diploma

I’m not embarrassed by my ‘participant’ ribbon compared to my classmates’ gold medals.  I’ll get my medal in December, and ideally a job doing something exciting with less competition around that same time.  From the prospective student's viewpoint, I wonder, how important is a college’s 4-year graduation rate?  Four years of college is less expensive than five, exact numbers depending scholarships and financial aid.  Comparing colleges numerically, a 4-year graduation rate is just another more-or-less important digit to weigh.  It’s in gauging the value of a college experience that I question the accuracy of this or any blind statistic.

St. Lawrence’s 77% 4-year rate places us just at the tail end of the hallowed US News and World Report’s “Highest 4-Year Graduation Rates” list. Washington and Lee, a fantastic university to which I was also accepted, falls squarely at position two. If a number made the deal, formulaic wisdom says I clearly picked the wrong school.

Living and learning through my past years at St. Lawrence and walking, sweating, and dancing through the Class of 2012 commencement ceremony assures me I did not. (Yes, we danced, to the request of one of our speakers and the displeasure of the lax bros sitting around me.)  I have a fake diploma displayed on my piano now, but I’m coming away from college with four years of excellent education and no visible “Super Senior” mark branded to my forehead. Most of my friends are jealous, actually, that I’m not yet done with school. They assure me they’ll visit when that single three-day weekend rolls around this fall.  

  President Fox and our speakers lead the dancing part of commencement

What's “nontraditional” at St. Lawrence, in the big scheme of things, is actually more traditional at nonresidential schools and those with adult learner populations.  So I didn’t officially graduate in four years.  I have a feeling, somehow, that when I’m 40 or 50 and dearly missing my days trudging up the Richardson stairs and paddling down the Grasse River I’ll be glad I stuck out all eight semesters.  No copping out for me.  Especially when I’m as lucky as I am to have one more semester of academic and community responsibility to a place like St. Lawrence.

My freshman year roommate, Lizzie, and me, looking so much wiser than we did in August 2008