Pomp and Circumstance

Recently I had the opportunity to watch a live-streamed graduation ceremony. My daughter, a college English professor, was asked to assist with commencement proceedings at the university where she is a faculty member and I was excited to see her in this new role. Although I will admit to a moment of pride as I watched her walk onto the stage in her regalia, it wasn’t this that made my eyes well up unexpectedly.

The videographer’s camera zeroed in on individual graduates as they entered the event center one by one. These same young people that I’d seen on my computer screen laughing out in the hallway minutes earlier were suddenly laser-focused and serious. Student after student filed in, each one immediately doing the same thing. They searched the crowded stands for a familiar face. The exact moment when each student found their family and friends amid a sea of strangers felt almost sacred. In an instant, emotion raced from depth to height and it was a privilege to witness that transformation on their faces when each one saw the people who had shown up to celebrate their accomplishments. This ceremony represented years of work and dedication for these students, but more importantly, it represented the limitless possibilities that exist in the world because of education.

My own relationship with education has slowly evolved over the course of more than 60 years. As a farmer’s daughter, a high school diploma was the highest expectation for me and I knew it without anyone actually having to say it. My education from grades one through six at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School did not include anything outside of the standard math, writing, spelling, and reading curriculums of the time. The earliest stories that we read involved Dick, Jane, Spot, and Puff. Later, stories with bigger words were introduced but the illustrations bore an odd likeness to Dick and Jane, only now they were older and had made a few friends. I remember walking into our junior high public-school library for the first time as a 7th grader, saucer-eyed in this room filled with shelves that were overflowing with hundreds of books. I didn’t know at that age that public libraries even existed, and the books in our home consisted of a dictionary, a set of dark brown encyclopedias, and three books that I had received as Christmas gifts over the course of several years.

My parents’ view of education leaned more toward the practical side, and books did not play a part in the things that they believed were important for us to learn. My siblings and I were taught how to stack bales of hay on a wagon so that you could stack it six rows high without the entire load shifting and falling off. We were taught how to milk cows, drive a tractor, hoe weeds between rows of soybeans, and chop thistles out of the pasture. My sisters and I learned how to grow vegetables and put them up for the winter, hang clothes on the wash line, and mow the lawn. Home Economics class taught us how to cook, bake, and set a table correctly. We belonged to the local 4-H club and along with various other life skills, learned how to sew. Despite the devoted 4-H leaders best attempts, I can still barely sew on a button. I could never get the hang of operating the foot pedal on our sewing machine at home, and my mother told me years later that she would about come unglued listening to me trying to regulate the speed, repeatedly going from zero to sixty with no stops in between. I am grateful for every bit of practical knowledge I acquired during my childhood, but there are times when I can’t help but feel that I missed out on so much. When I listen to others talk about the books they read in elementary school that influenced them, I have nothing to add to the conversation other than Heidi, which I read over and over until the pages eventually fell away from the binding.

While working as a paraprofessional at an elementary school in my 50s, gaps in education were frequently referenced as we discussed the best ways to help students succeed. It made perfect sense to me that a child who has never seen coins or an analog clock would not understand these things regardless what grade they were in. Learning gaps are frequently about a lack of exposure and seldom about a deficit in intelligence. It wasn’t until then that I stopped being ashamed for not knowing about things that others seemed to regard as common knowledge. It wasn’t until then that I realized how many gaps existed in my own education. It wasn’t until then that I began to appreciate all of the different types of intelligences that exist and how they quietly evolve when we are otherwise occupied. In my early 20s, my employer offered a tuition reimbursement program that would have covered most of the expense of a college education. He repeatedly suggested that I enroll and I declined each time, giving him every excuse I could think of but never telling him the truth as I saw it. I was not smart enough. I was not college material.

Now, as a senior citizen with decades of life experience, I know better. My attitude about academics was set in place by someone else, and it has taken the better part of a lifetime to unlearn. Although a formal degree will not be something I achieve in my lifetime, that fact has not kept me from wanting to learn about all the things in this world about which I am curious. Native plants, literature, psychology, religion – the list is long and continually changing, and I am so glad. Watching caterpillars devour your Pearly Everlasting Anaphalis margaritacea is disheartening until you learn that by the end of the summer your yard will be teeming with American Painted Lady Butterflies.

Children who grow up hungry never take food for granted, and I think growing up without an abundance of books is probably the reason I buy far more books now than I will ever have time to read. I’m still hungry and the books taking up space in my home are security for me – insurance that I will always have a full belly. Time has created an appreciation and reverence within me for education that seems to have summed itself up in the notes of “Pomp and Circumstance”. The song never fails to elicit overwhelming emotions that are impossible to fast-blink away. It is the insatiable longing for knowledge and achievement that I have felt my entire life, set to music. So it doesn’t matter whether the person walking across the stage for their diploma is someone I know or not. It doesn’t even matter if I’m celebrating their success virtually over a live stream.

Whoever you are, congratulations. I see you, and I am so proud of you.