class of 2012

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.

We could not have asked for a more beautiful day for the Class of 2012 Commencement Ceremony. It was 85 degrees and not a cloud in the sky! While I enjoyed the ceremony in the shade of the large, leafy trees over Creasy Commons, I think the graduates would have appreciated a cloud or two, or at least a breeze to cut the heat.


Photo provided by Tara Freeman, University Photographer.