About my Graduation

I graduated NEIU last month. I am now a certified Bachelor, ladies! Unfortunately, the school has held my degree hostage until I finish paying them, and I'm kind of BROKE, so I don't really feel very accomplished for anyhing.

Anyways, my commencement speech was god-awful, and I don't think it's fair to say that the December graduates don't deserve the same quality as the spring ones. then again, I'll never really know, will I?

The guy chosen to give the commencement speech for my graduating class was Thomas White, a stuffy white rich CEO insurance salesman who graduated my school, NEIU, in physical education. Ya' hear that? A degree in gym! Yeah. The little bio in our program said he started in an upper position at Allstate, and left America to work for AIG Asia. AIG!!! The 2008 bailout AIG!!! What an ideal candidate to speak to "the most diverse school in Illinois", or whatever the school’s brochures brag about. The school's president spent ten minutes ass-kissing and telling us how he had dinner with him and his wife last night. Then, the aptly-named “White” told us all about how smart and funny his wife was. At one point he spoke about how wonderful it is to be an American. This is the guy who moved to Zurich and works for the Asian branch of AIG. Then he spoke to all of our millions of collected dollar deficits about what it means to give back. HA! The only thing I was inspired to do was punch the next guy I hear say the word "diversity". There was a student who gave a small speech earlier. She graduated from Columbia College of Chicago and is here at Northeastern for her masters. Translation: she couldn't afford Columbia anymore. In her defense, she had a good speech: EXCEPT for one thing she said that pissed me off. She was obviously chosen to speak because she was gay and maintained a 4.0 GPA; two things I will never be able to accomplish. But then she spoke about getting back up after getting knocked down. But she had a 4.0 GPA! What slip-up was she referring to? I know she probably had to face other difficulties, but all I know about her is that she got a perfect score in school. She didn't give any examples of her hardships and that made it hard to relate to her. But I'll reiterate that she was a billion times better than the actual commencement speaker. So I was thoroughly unimpressed and uninspired on my graduation day, and I thought, hey, I'm a writer, I'll write an awesome graduation speech for everyone who felt like I did!