A day that we'd worked so long and hard for. A day that in this past year I feared may never come and yet magically appeared without a fuss in the middle of July. On this swirling grey early morning, I joined a steady stream of formally dressed students clopping along in heels and shiny shoes to the heart of the Uni that had become their home for the past 3 years. For one final, and slightly sad time, I stopped outside Mario's bright blue front door and berated him for being tardy as we gently pottered to meet our fellow biologists and, as we had done every morning for the past 2 years, blend into the back, a little late but a sturdy unit together.
But this time, what a change - there were gowns! Ah the pleasure of swishing up and down the cloisters in academic dress that billowed so satisfyingly at ones side. Finally, finally I felt like an academic. Forget 'students' in their uniform of dirty jeans, club hoody and a pallid expression of exhaustion and malnutrition. We were Graduands! Bright, successful young professionals, full of optimism and naivety at our future plans for the world. And clustering around them, the throngs of parents, bursting with pride and relief. Obtaining a degree is not something one does alone. It is something done with phone calls to Mum: tearfully fretting about screwed up exams, and quickly asking how long to cook a roast chicken for, and pensively reasoning what you might actually like to do with you life. Equally it is also about the phone calls to Dad: discussing the creaking noise from the boiler, and I am lost somewhere in London late at night and please-can-you-come-and-get-me-*sniiffffff*-as-I'm-really-really-ill?! So it was lovely to say thank you to them too. All in all a very lovely day.
And so the curtains fall on my 3 years at Holloway.
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