As the end of May approaches, every parent’s, grandparent’s, uncle’s, and vodka aunt’s favorite time of year gets closer and closer: graduation season. Don’t get me wrong, graduations are important! My sister graduated from college a few weeks ago, and I will literally tell any hobo off the street that she graduated magna cum laude because I’m so damn proud of her. But let me let you in on a little secret. You ready? Come closer. Okay, here we go: Commencement is boring. It’s so fucking dull. It’s probably one of the most boring things on the planet, among other mind-numbing activities such as watching paint dry or learning to differentiate between types of soils (shout out to the Geology Department). Here is a compiled list of all the reasons why Commencement is the worst:
1. It takes forever
Yeah, you might be radiating happiness about your graduate for the first two hours, but as soon as your kid’s name is called and there are 300 other dumb kids left, the magic instantly disappears. I’m dead serious, the ceremony goes from the entertainment level of Disneyland all the way down to that of waiting in line at the DMV. Sure you can bring something to pass the time (a book, a crossword puzzle, a flask strapped to your inner thigh, etc.), but thus far I haven’t found a method that completely drowns out the sound of apathetic administrators mispronouncing people’s names.
2. You will probably be seated next to the worst people on the planet
Maybe you’ll be sitting in between family members and it’ll be fine (or maybe your family members are the worst people on the planet, I don’t know your life), but if your experience is anything close to mine, your aisle-mates won’t be the greatest. In my experience, I was surrounded by a giant family of conservative Trump supporters. To be fair, they never actually told me they were conservatives, but I could just kinda tell, ya know? For example, the father of the family took the time to explain to me that they were a family of southerners from southern Virginia whose southern children attended a non-southern college in south (not to be confused with “the South”) Pennsylvania, which was close to where the Mason-Dixon line was, but still as far north as they would go. Because they were from the South. Also, the dad kept checking The Wall Street Journal on his phone during the ceremony, so I mean, tell me I’m wrong.
3. Who the fuck actually likes “Pomp and Circumstance”?
I know that it’s a tradition or whatever, but after listening to 10 minutes of some shitty underclassmen instrumentalists half-heartedly playing “Pomp and Circumstance” while 599 graduates who are not your child walk by, you’ll never want to hear that dumb song again. Also, who decided that “Pomp and Circumstance” is the graduation song? I mean, no offense to Sir Edward Elgar, but there are so many better options. Why not process to something more modern, like “Cha Cha Slide” or “Bad and Boujee”? Or perhaps we can use a super-fast march so graduates would have to fucking run to their seats, mortar boards a-flyin’!
4. There’s always one jackass with an air horn
Over the multiple commencements I’ve had to sit through, this is the one constant. I don’t know if families pass down an heirloom air horn from generation to generation to take to graduations, but somehow, at least once a commencement like a goddamn quota or something, an air horn goes off. I mean, at a very base level, it’s nice that a family loves their graduate that much. But why does your public display of affection have to be so annoying? Just get the kid flowers or something. And if you’re the jackass with the airhorn: Well, at least it’s not a vuvuzela.
5. All the fuss about cords
People get really competitive about how many pieces of string they have hanging from their neck. Newsflash: Yeah, it’s cool you’re in a frat, but the whole point of a graduation ceremony is that you’re graduating. Everyone graduating worked really hard to get to this point and regardless of whether you have a red or blue or gold-blue or pink-green-purple or yellow-blue-orange-polkadot cord or not, you’re not better than anyone else.
