I graduate with my masters this Friday. Thinking about my previous graduations, I realized this is going to be the first one that will be "normal." When I graduated from HS was during the middle of my parent's divorce... an unpleasant time all the way around. By the time I graduated I was living in the next town over and barely saw any of my classmates after graduation. Of course, with the exception of a few I really had no desire to keep in contact with many of them either. Still, not the kind of summer most people have when they graduate from high school. I had no sooner graduated when I began working every morning making pizza dough and saving up money for the start of college.

Next up was my graduation from MTSU. Since I decided to take the long route out of college I already missed graduating with a few of my friends. Throw in a summer graduation and I missed a few more. Toss not knowing I was eligible to graduate until the last moment I missed the deadline to apply. Turns out I could still walk but that deadline pertained to making sure my name would appear in the program. So according to the printed record handed out to attendees I may as well have not existed. Given my academic record by that point my parents were well within their right to wonder if I was in fact going to graduate. Adding insult to injury, my Tenn History prof walked up behind me and asked "well, I wondered if you passed!" the way he only knew how. A chortle later he informed me that I received a C for a class that in all honesty I slept through (7am and I still don't get along to this day). I knew next to no one in my graduating class, my name was not in the program. At least one of my recording industry prof's gave the speech... and more or less informed the recording industry types we'd be asking "would you like fries with that?"

This time around is different. I'm graduating with a bunch of people that I know and like. My name will be in the program! (this has been confirmed by my network of liars, cheats, and backstabbers) It's going to be a great day to say the least. Only 34 years in the making.

Made up Band Name of the Day: Spectacular Failures in Accounting