This is actually, a very long and ugly post.

I feel like my life is happening (I paused here, thinking about the appropriateness of "passing by/me" but decided against it because well, I'm too in the moment to call it passing) in a hurry.

I fear I will never actually post my journal entries from Europe- it already seems like a lifetime away. But yes, sometimes, I get into my Europe bouts again. I miss Paris, sometimes a bit too sorely.

So, back to my point. So much has happened to me. Today was the dreaded Board meeting. Last Thursday, my commencement ceremony (it's so corny right, commencement).

About commencement: I really wasn't very high about it. I thought I would be happier, I really once did. I've been describing it as "anticlimatic" when some people ask me. But that doesn't really touch the nerve. I should have been happy, I think, or at least taken the moment to celebrate that I had survived and that I'd gotten what I came to university for.

The truth is I am retrospectively a tiny bit pissed off.

Step 1: It all started a few weeks back when I confessed to someone that I wasn't all that hyped up about commencement. I threw in some off-hand comment about how it was at a shitty timing (8pm- how to take photos!?) and that I had to get to work the next day by 8.30am, and of course, a whine about how it would be filled with long, boring speeches. (Bryan? Perhaps someone else-) Anyway, that person told me that "commencement is for parents". It didn't really seem like a particularly insightful comment then... then I mulled over it on the bus ride home... repeated it to a couple of people who whined to me on the same theme... even said it to myself a couple of times to remind myself to exude a socially-expected level of excitement to my colleagues, my parents etc.

Step 2: At commencement, people on stage made speeches about how this day was a celebration of everybody that had walked with us till this point- graduation. (I clapped for every graduate.) I don't think I pulled off being "high" very well and I don't think I'll bother uploading photos. I didn't take that many, to be honest.

Step 3: At dinner today, my parents, as they have been doing every day since I have started work, inquired about my day at work-- and told me that working life is the beginning of real life and that school hasn't really taught me anything. This time, unlike many other times, I protested. I said, "No, I think I learnt a lot in school." And then I was shot down and I kept eating my dinner. (You know, I really don't know which is worse. When I simply say "okay", they say I'm not telling them enough. But when I tell them about the actual "excitement" of my work, I get a lecture as outlined above. I suppose I should only bring home sparkling successes- like straight A transcripts.)

That kind of set me off on this ranting mood and so I'm here.

My parents were more excited than me at my commencement- and that pisses me off. Because they consistently testify that I have learnt nothing from my years of education, nothing that "matters" in the real world or would help me cope with working life. And yet they were beaming and happy at the ceremony. What were you celebrating? Why do you keep saying this shit to me even though you know (you know) how much my experience in school means to me, the learning part, the growing intellectually part, the fucking lessons?

Maybe I'm just stressed starting out at my job.

I think I'll always recall commencement with a bitter aftertaste.

But I think after Year 4 Sem 2and what I'm going through now, it's quite certain that I will never have children. I just never want to be part of this to someone else. I don't care that it happens everywhere all the time and will keep happening. I just don't want to be part of it. I'm so frustrated.