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the Summer of Sanjiv
o be honest, I don’t remember my graduation ceremony too well. I wasn’t under the influence or anything like that; the whole thing was just a blur of mercilessly long speeches and kids’ names being read out from a list and all. I switched to my university’s school of journalism after two and a half years as an engineering major, so I ended up not really knowing who most of the people graduating with me were. And the sound system wasn’t really set up too well in the graduating students’ section, so I could only get a faint murmur out of whatever the speaker said.
Apparently, he was this big shot in the television industry, back in the day. You know how, at the end of some old TV shows, they used to show a guy at a typewriter who’d yank a piece of paper out and toss it away and it would turn into the production company’s logo? Apparently, our commencement speaker was the guy at the typewriter. It was a very big deal, I guess. My dad knew who he was and seemed pretty excited about it. Make of that what you will.
Anyway, the indistinct sounds from the speaker made for a decent bit of white noise, and I spent most of the time just spacing out, nodding off occasionally.
I do remember one time specifically when our speaker said something that really gave the crowd of parents a chuckle.
I turned to the girl next to me and asked her, “What’d he just say? Was that about me or anything?”
“No,” she said. “He just said that it’s important to have a plan of what you want to do when you graduate.”
“Oh,” I said. “Definitely not about me.”
After he was done, all the different majors went up and got their diplomas from their different deans, each student doing it to varying degrees of applause from the audience. I remember a girl, a film major, I think, seated in front of me turning around and saying, “Will you do me a big favor? When I go up to get my diploma, will you just cheer for me? Otherwise, no one else in the audience will and I’ll feel like a loser.”
I guess the idea of having a complete stranger cheer for her made her feel like a real winner. I said I would, but I didn’t know her name, so I didn’t know when to cheer. So I didn’t cheer at all. It was either that or cheer for everyone, and I wasn’t going to do that.