Graduation is one of those things everyone pretends to accept and understand, when really everybody is on the same sinking ship. It's the same every year, trust me - and this week is one of the most exciting or boring weeks of the year, depending on how you look at it. For me, it's a week filled with relaxation, a week where you're filled with such a sense of possibility that I just can't deny. I'm in the middle of it, really. The only people left are graduating seniors, ushers, RA's or summer school people, and it's amazing, really. I mean, only a few years back, I was a freshman embarking on my college career, and now look at me... I'm sort of closing a chapter of my life, my four undergraduate college years- sort of.

It's at times like this I realize just how much Gallaudet has given me. I fully intend not to be gushy or propagandaish, but "wow," I am totally humbled by the institution that is Gallaudet at moments like this. It's amazing... I mean, how the system works like a well-oiled machine. Sure, it runs like a rusty ol' John Deere sometimes, but not today. The flurry of graduation activities surrounding me is astounding. Everything has to be planned down to the last detail, and certain things just miraculously come together. I'm just shocked by how things change in an instant, much less four years. I see my friends' parents come in town, congratulate them on their kids graduating, take them out to dinner and send them off to their respective summers...

Here's a perfect story that's gonna illustrate the meaning of graduation and college careers in general. When I started out my freshman year, I was part of the first floor ever established at Gallaudet that allowed freshmen to live in an upperclassman dorm. In fact, I wasn't actually supposed to be part of the floor, since I was on a waiting list, but a certain girl named Jenny moved out, so I was assigned to room 305A in Clerc Hall. You can probably imagine the amount of grumbling I got from upperclassmen, when they realized that they didn't get into Clerc because freshmen (!) were allowed to live in Clerc, a primarily upperclassman dorm. But I didn't care, because it meant cushy living... a living room, a private bathroom, and two bedrooms. In fact, throughout my entire Gallaudet life, I've never had to share a public bathroom, which is fine by me.

But another reason I didn't care so much about the fact that I lived in Clerc, away from the other freshmen, was because I met Stephanie and Elisa.

I was assigned to 305A, like I said, and discovered later on that my roommate, Steph, who I thought was weird, would become one of my closest friends in life. I entered my room to find all the walls on her side were covered with purple plastic, along with glow-in-the-dark happy faces. Steph's parents were interesting too - her mom referred to herself in the third person (as in "Mom's going out to the car to get some more boxes"), and her dad was what I call a quiet floater, just there to help his only daughter get to college. New Student Orientation week (what we refer to as NSO week) was one of the most fun weeks of my life - I met and made friends with more diverse and interesting people than I'd ever met in my life. Later on, as school began, I settled into the mundane routine of my classes and discovered that the people in my classes weren't simply classmates with two-dimensional lives - in fact, they were people with lives outside of class (at least, some of them!). Elisa was one of those people - she was the girl who lived down the hall, just a door away from mine, and soon became one of my closest friends during my freshman year.

Steph's on the left, Elisa's on the right and I'm in the middle ;)

Now, flash-forward four years, and Steph, Elisa and I are standing out in front of Field House, near the world-famous Bison statue looking out at Elstad, and we're surrounded by family members. Elisa and I are no longer the friends we once were, and Steph and I are no longer roommates; yet, we are all connected by one unmistakable thing. We stepped into the world at Gallaudet, and left together, with four years of flashing photographs of fleeting memories. We came away from our four undergraduate years with nothing more and nothing less than the wholeness of the Gallaudet experience. We are all smiling in those photographs that our parents took on that day. We know one fact, as we go our separate ways - that nothing can ever take away our mutual experience of Gallaudet, even though we went through an incredible range of varying paths, sometimes crossing and crisscrossing each other's, and found ourselves intertwined at the last day of our college experiences together. We found ourselves looking at each other in that new light - the new light that the roots of a great old oak see when they suddenly split from each other, shedding old soil and reaching in different directions toward the bright sun.

So what if I'm being a little melodramatic here when you take my comments out of context? I'm just trying to do the one thing everyone else does at one time or other - describe exactly what Gallaudet is and why everyone loves it, and at some point, struggles with it, is bemused by it, curses it, and above all, praises it. I'm looking for that one word that can encompass it all in a time capsule, so I can dig a hole for it and bury it and find it again when I'm sending my own kids off to college and present it to them as this thundering gift from the past.

Problem is, there ain't just one word. Or any hole big enough. So, I'm left to pick up the pieces of my past four undergraduate years, and I've decided to return back to Gallaudet for one more year - just to squeeze a little more out of the big orange that Gallaudet is, and get another BA in Art History. Maybe by the time I get that degree, I'll be able to find that word that completely describes this place.