Lo and behold, there was ONE piece of mail today: my diploma. Doggone, I should have snapped a photo with my phone, but oh well. I ran into the house grinning ear to ear only to realize after about 5 seconds that the shower was running.

/sigh

I went to the couch to wait it out and begin our ceremonious opening of the envelope and hanging of the paper in its appointed place. Enjoy the gallery.

As we drove into town, it started to sprinkle. Then it started to pour. That’s not really a big deal when it’s an indoor graduation, but anyone who has ever been to a graduation at the Sun Dome knows two things: 1) it is a long walk to your car 2) the crowds around the one entrance everyone wants to use makes things 10x more difficult. We didn’t want rain. We didn’t get rain there. /phew!

I made my way to the registration area, got my card to give to the reader (who has the distinct “privilege” of reading every single student’s name as they walk across the stage), found a classmate from an English class, and proceeded to the floor… 75 minutes before the ceremony was set to begin. Soon, the stands begin to fill, and I don’t just mean that people started arriving, either. By the time we sensed they were about to begin, we were hard pressed to find any empty seats in a 10,000 seat arena set to 7,000 or so capacity for the event.

USF President Judy Genshaft’s opening words shocked us. We were the largest single-semester graduating class in the history of USF with 5,050 students and Dr. Stu Silverman read 1,021 names from that night’s commencement alone! Looking at the photos below, I can tell you from 2 past Sun Dome graduation ceremonies, the chairs usually only extend 3/5ths of the way back from the front. There were about 400 more names read than I remember the previous tallies they announce in thanking him for such a speaking effort.

If there is one thing I will always remember from the yada-yada-yada that took place was the Genshaft saying, “Remember, as the university gains in stature, so does your degree.” I beam with pride every time I see the USF helmet or logo on SportsCenter during the NCAA football season when they break into the Top 25, even the Top 5. I grew up as a little boy thinking I’d be a Buckeye, and that Ohio State pride still runs very, very deep.

Now I am a Bull.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As I headed to my seat, I noticed my brother-in-law getting up and walking along the upper walkway along with me, waving. I thought he was just going to the bathroom. He never came back. Hmmm. When we all got to the cars for photos, as planned, I asked where he was and I somehow got duped into a quick change of subject and a pile on of hugs. I was sort of grumbling to myself that he wasn’t in any of the photos. When we got in the car, I asked my wife why he left, to which she replied that his girlfriend forgot something and he needed to take it to her before she left for vacation. Grumble… putting your girlfriend before my college graduation… grumble.

As we pull onto their street and approach their house, I couldn’t figure out why there was a Jeep Wrangler and a Chevy Lumina parked in front of the house.

• I wasn’t expecting anyone to come over at nearly 9pm.
• I wasn’t expecting the Jeep because he’s a rather new acquaintance, but that’s cool.
• The driveway was empty.
• No other cars were to be seen.

I opened the door and my jaw must have hit the floor to see 14 people there shouting, “Congratulations!” There was my entire small group from church, a couple from a past group, our first year marriage mentors, and my best man… along with a nice spread of mini sandwiches, dips, and a USF cake made by my favorite cake maker.

I knew that little lady of mine was up to something. She spent the entire ride home recounting all of the lies she told me in the last 10 days to keep it a surprise and get everything planned. We got home after midnight, thus started my first full day as a college graduate.

What a woman!

What a graduation!

Thanks, family and friends, for making it my best day, second only to our wedding.

Big Day #2: College graduation

Commencement is at 6pm, but we have to be there by 4:30, so I’d better get a big lunch in before the long fast until post-ceremony eating can begin.

The live webcast is shown here: http://www.netcast.usf.edu/browse.php?page=commencement – you can either download the Silverlight plugin at the top right of that page or click the link below the video window to watch it in Windows Media Player.

With only 2 weeks of school left before my 2 final exams, my last Spanish work carries a little pressure – to use a litote (that’s a form of understatement for the non-English majors reading this). Scratch that. I just plugged in my grades for the class. Not to brag, but give glory where it’s deserved and many thanks to my brother-in-law for tutoring me with my homework and the first two exams A LOT, here is what I just found. If I only got a 70 on my exam last Saturday (a long shot to score that low) and suck at my last two homeworks to receive 18pts less than normal AND bomb my final with a 50% (nearly impossible to do that poorly with the way she writes the exams), I would still receive… (do I hear a drum roll?)… an 81.95% B for the course. Faring better with my normal grades thusfar, I’d receive an 88%, and she said if I was that close, she would bump me to an “A” because I’ve attended every review session and been “a positive influence on her outlook on life” after finding out I have cystic fibrosis and never made any excuses or even let her know when I was on IVs for a break.

Okay, so that pressure is off! Did you like how many parenthetical asides I used, too?

I didn’t do too, too hot on my Biblical Archaeology exam (C+), but I hope my paper will bring that grade up and do better on this exam, though I’m not putting much of an expectation on doing better on the exam. We cover a lot of material and it’s a 5-essay exam (in-class, no notes) on about 400 pages of material.

Financially, it’s been rough. January was down 75% from previous months and February was down about 85%. We had to use savings to pay some bills instead of our plan to pay off this semester’s tuition. March was back to making my paycheck, but April was looking really bad because we owed Uncle Sam $980 plus our CPA fees. Ouch! That’ll teach me to make a profit, eh? Things really came together in the last 10 days, though. My long-time client, Pearson Publishing contacted me with 2 new author sites, billed directly to the authors instead of Pearson. That’s a huge difference because Pearson pays on a Net 30 policy, which would pretty much screw up any chance of making “payroll” this month. I got one site done today, minus some training, so his net payment should be coming tomorrow. The other site is underway as of 1pm and will likely be done tomorrow, though they send checks immediately. With some other small jobs and reminding several clients that they owe me has brought in a nice chunk – so when this second site is done, we will be 4-digits over what we need for the month, but that leads to the next issue: medical.

If any of you have been following my CF site: CF Fatboy, you know I got my pulmonary vest device written off by the company it’s made by. We owed them $1,200 for a co-pay. What we didn’t realize is that once they wrote that off, bills would start flooding in since we no longer had met our out-of-pocket expenses for the year. Now, instead of owing one company $1,200 we owe 2-3 companies about $800 so far. Thankfully, it’s the end of my insurance year. Sadly, we started all over with our out-of-pocket responsibilities.

I am ever so thankful that we have such a good (what the new gov’t regime would call a “Cadillac plan”) insurance in my individual policy Aetna HMO that has treated me so well for over a decade. Last year was the first year I had any OOP limit to meet before 100% coverage. It’s nice to be able to plan on forking out $1,500 in the first couple of months of the new policy year, but January, February, and taxes made that impossible this year. With a continuation of business like it is now, our living on the edge time is over. Time to be blessed and rewarded for being a hard worker and a good and faithful servant.

Graduation announcements have been ordered and should arrive on Friday, but the College of Arts and Sciences has yet to let me and several others know if their applications are approved. Oh well. I’m walking anyway!

I can tell how busy I was by how much “free time” I seem to have now – it’s ridiculous, really. When Kristin goes to bed, I don’t have to work because I was at school during the day. When the weekend rolls around, we can go shopping or just lay around watching TV and deciding what to eat next without working on Spanish or some other online deadline.

I’m on my way to the advisor today to see what I can do for my final elective. The exit requirement sheets are so darn confusing, it’s better to go see an advisor and get into the right class without any surprises when I apply to graduate in a few weeks.

Did I just say “apply to graduate!?” It’s been a long road since this high school graduation pic was taken in 1997: in the last decade/century/millennium. The road started out promising: full-ride scholarship plus books to any state school and got accepted both to USF and the Honors College. Something just wasn’t clicking right in my brain and it took too long to realize that college students actually have to study to get good grades (at least when they’re 18). I quickly lost my scholarship and had to get a job, and another, and another. Going back to school wasn’t really an option when I needed to provide my own health insurance and things just seemed too busy to go to school and work. I had no idea how anyone could do both.

A few years later, some friends of the family made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I was pretty close to having my A.A. and the offer was for a 50% scholarship to finish my 2yr degree at community college. I finished in 3 or 4 semesters while working during the day after all.

Love and marriage kept things going pretty easy in my life by having a partner to share the load of day to day living and I kept plugging away at my 4yr degree with the school assistance program at work. I got something like 7 out of 8 classes with an “A” and got those all reimbursed. When I left that job, I was on my own for school again and had to take the summer off. We hit classes hard this semester with the goal of walking in May 2010.

After meeting with my advisor, it was going to take 17 hours (including Spanish I) for the Fall and 14 hours (including Spanish II) in the Spring. No slips. No D’s. No vacations. No hospitalizations. Hardcore school all the way for the next 30 weeks with 4 relaxing weeks in the middle. Time to get my USF diploma on the wall next to Kristin’s to make for 2 HCC diplomas and 2 USF diplomas in the house.

Here we are in the middle – to be continued…

Yet that is the course I have the least control of. How do you force yourself to absorb the concepts of a foreign language while not immersed in speaking it and working 50-60 hours/wk (in English, I might add)?

Things will only get worse in February when I apply to graduate. I’d really like to have some sort of celebration of my 13-year journey to get my degree, which would involve invitations and then require a follow-through performance to pass Spanish 2.

It’s time to stay positive and focus on the goal: hearing Dr . Silverman rattle off 800+ names at commencement, one of which being “Jesse Petersen,” walking across that stage with 5,000 watching with no clue about who I am, and then hanging my diploma in the hall next to my wife’s.

That will be a fine “job well done.”

• E-commerce exam due Tuesday night
• Tech writing lab due Tuesday by 2pm
• Tech writing project due by next Tuesday at 2pm
• American Lit essay due next Tuesday at noon
• Equity in the Workplace discussion board posts y Wednesday at midnight
• Wrapping up a chef’s site
• Wrapping up a speaker’s site
• Getting into the Pearson book site to update for their latest book
• Wrapping up a personal blog
• Wrapping up a small packaging site
• Migrating a business site that b5 Media is dropping
• Converting a good friend’s site to Thesis and rocking it out
• Designing my parent’s blog around their newly-installed Thesis theme.
• Starting a packaging site project of epic proportions
• Starting a packaging site from another packager
• Send out our next newsletter
• Eat
• Sleep
• Be merry

The good news is that we have been blessed with income through the middle of December already, but I’ve got a lot of plates spinning that need to come down safely to not create a mess.

I’ll be the first to tell you there are a lot of stupid people out there. Students, teachers, parents, workers, bosses… all walks of life. By definition, 50% of the population has a less than average intelligence – something to think about while driving. Despite those terrible statistics that Jay Leno exposes on a regular basis, don’t knock the rest of academia and those who love to learn and keep on learning after it’s not required.

That said, that article is a piece of work… I mean, a piece of art. I’ve spent a good many years proofreading papers and always spot typographic errors in publications. I was an editor for 3 years and know what things look like when a stupid person writes something. To even consider that letter to the editor as a contribution to society is laughable. Even numbskulls know about capitalizing sentences – what they don’t know is how to use parenthetical statements (which that person did twice). There is also a sign of significant intelligence in the actual ideas of the letter, though I’m not sure which provoked the tbt* editors more: the atrocious spelling or the position on the topic that the student took. The very existence of the letter should set off some alarms to the validity of the piece as written by an idiot.

Two more points for kickers: 1) would tbt* have published the piece if it was written with perfect prose – would it have made its way out of a pile of letters they receive every day? 2) if it was written by a dolt, they would have not known how poor the grammar was and would have omitted the request for anonymity.

Here is the first page of the replies to the editor that tbt* received in response to the student letter: Replies to the editor

I am calling for a full-scale investigation of the author to have tbt* report back that said author is actually an honor roll student with plans to attend the USF Honor’s College next fall, but is fearful of any action the university may take against their application if this was attributed to them.

Hello everyone! Is it just me or is trying to write half a page for one question a little too much? I have a full course load and tons of group projects due all around the same time and it is a little frustrating to try and come up with additional words when I feel like I have already answered the question! Just wanted a little confirmation that I am not the only one who is having trouble with this.

Cry me a river! This is a Junior-level course at a top 50 university and she’s complaining about having to write 1/2 page for an answer? Welcome to college, little girl. Wait until life smacks you upside the head, because it will some day, and you need to go through something as “traumatic” as this to prepare for it.

Looks like someone should have done school work over the weekend like me.

I got to campus an hour early because I knew it was going to be a large class because the roster online showed more than 150 people and outlets for laptops are scarce. Of course, being Saturday, the door to the lecture hall was locked so I looked for a bench and found one in the shade about 100 feet from the door.

Ten minutes later, a couple of people (based on age and behavior comparison of the two, I’d say a mother and daughter) came up the walk, looped around in front of the door a couple of times, tried the door, and then kept walking. One would assume that any normal person (like said person on the bench in the shade) would find a bench in the shade and wait for the door to open since they were 50 minutes early.

Not these two. In an act of brilliance, they decided that they would do an entire lap around the building and try to go into Burger King (closed at 9am on Saturday) to look for a rear entrance to the hall. They returned with a campus map open like tourists and I could hear them say, “ULH 101. This is the building and room. Why isn’t it open?” I’ll give them one guess, but I think they need more than that.

Around they go for another lap and stop a woman with her iPod on her arm clearly on a fast stroll to burn calories to ask her why the building isn’t open. As exercise woman passed me, she gave me a morning greeting and told me they were looking for another entrance to the building. I told her that they were 40 minutes early for a Saturday orientation; she laughed and kept walking.

On their next lap and attempt to open a locked door, I shouted over to them that was indeed the entrance and that it was still locked because they were 40 minutes early for the first class of the day on a Saturday. I should have kept my mouth shut, because they walked over to me to sit on a nearby bench and ask if I was a part of the orientation. Then if I was Wesley or someone like that. Immediately telling them I wasn’t but wondering why they assumed I was Wesley, I figured he was a T.A. for the course and resorted to putting in my headphones to stop the insanity.

By the way, according to the roll call, they are mother/daughter. Freaky. I guess age didn’t give Mom an advantage and chronological proximity to high school life didn’t give the daughter an advantage.

Life lesson: a college degree doesn’t mean that much for reasoning or practical functioning.