Commencement

Finally.
That must be the thought of many graduates the moment they received the scroll on stage.
In the words of our valedictorian, “we have come so far, worked so hard, grow so much”, and today is the day to mark the end of a journey and the beginning of another.
It is the day where life commences for us.
It was indeed a day of mixed emotions, even the days leading up to this.
On one hand, it is nothing more than a procedure for us to be officially done with university life, a session where we come together and celebrate the end of our education in a highly decorated manner and a time for us to rejoice and leave some memories together in the form of photographs.
It’s just a two hours ceremony we had to sit through and an hour of photo-taking with friends and life goes on.
On the other hand, to be officially done with university is a pretty big deal, four years of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears is a worthy cause for a celebration, and to be able to share this joy with our fellow batch mates who had gone through the same process while planting our last common experience together is a rather meaningful thing to do.
Life goes on just about the same.
But something stirs within me, something tells me that, life will never be the same anymore.
We will never be required to attend the same lectures that we had skipped several times because the lecturer was too dry in his teaching.
We will never meet each other for lunch in the canteen and just chill the entire afternoon away without worries.
We will never worry about deadlines, arranging a date for everyone to meet and discuss the group project, and rushing our assignments overnight in school together.
We will never walk around campus with the same perspectives we once had four years back, when we had just began this long journey together.
And even more things that just will never be the same again, after today.
A simple ceremony which does not effectively change much in any aspects of our lives, had in fact changed how we look at every aspect of our lives.
To the Class of 2017, I am happy that we’ve come so far together, I am proud of what we have accomplished, and I look forward to what we will achieve in the future.
